


all each riddles, when unknown

by susiecarter



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe, Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Flirting, Developing Relationship, Identity Porn, M/M, Mutual Pining, superbat big bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-01 11:32:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 51,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11485518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Post-MoS AU: Clark, struggling to deal with the events of Black Zero Day, is assigned a straightforward human-interest piece—on Wayne Enterprises. Then Batman catches Superman's attention, Clark Kent starts investigating Batman, Bruce Wayne spends a lot of timearguing withhitting on Clark Kent, and Bruce's best efforts to find a way to hurt Superman start to bear fruit.And then things get complicated.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't want this to get lost under all my acknowledgments and notes, so FIRST THINGS FIRST: while it is spoilery for the story and you may not want to look at it before reading, please don't forget to check out [the spectacular art made to accompany this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11512731), which represents a truly superheroic effort by my wonderful and talented pinch-hitter, [Steals_Thyme/Liodain](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Liodain)! IT'S BEAUTIFUL AND YOU SHOULD NOT MISS IT.
> 
> Thank you so very much to the excellent and endlessly patient mods for all their hard work behind the scenes on this bang, which at times must have felt like herding cats except less rewarding; to Lio for stepping up so generously when circumstances demanded it and doing such superlative work so quickly; to everybody who made the official chat such a wonderful place to hang out, on the sadly rare occasions I was able to participate; and to everyone who participated in the bang more generally, even if they never dropped by the chat at all, for creating and sharing such spectacular work. I also owe a special thank-you to [JustAWritingAmateur](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/JustAWritingAmateur)/[jew-gi-oh](http://jew-gi-oh.tumblr.com) for sharing with me the Bruce/Clark playlist that I had on repeat as I chugged through thousands of words a day in the week leading up to the deadline! YOU ARE ALL GREAT AND SHOULD FEEL GREAT, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU.
> 
> This fic treats Man of Steel and the first 10-15 minutes of BvS as canon, and then diverges during the following 18 months, which BvS leaps over. It was written well before Wonder Woman came out, though, so it's not totally compliant there. While it is 99% a movieverse fic, certain minor elements do come from elsewhere:  
> \- While she never quite makes it onscreen, Cyndia Syl and her interest in architecture are from the standalone Batman graphic novel _Death by Design_.  
>  \- The Metro-Narrows Bridge, connecting Metropolis and Gotham, is bronze-age comics canon.  
> \- References to Thrill as a drug whose origins Batman is investigating come from a Black Mask comics storyline; Joe Rabbit is a henchdude of his.  
> \- LeMarvin Bistro (and its location in Metropolis) is from the Lois & Clark TV show. :D
> 
> And a final note: SERIOUSLY, [THE ART](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11512731). Look, admire, comment! ♥

 

 

> We are all each of us riddles, when unknown one to the other.
> 
> — _The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck_ , Mary Shelley

 

 

 

Clark puts his hands on his hips and tilts his head back—as though he's looking at the roof, but for a second he just lets himself look at the sky instead.

Maybe it should bother him. Maybe it would, if it were nighttime—if he were able to see the stars. But it's midafternoon, and that flat opaque blue doesn't look anything like the view of space from Zod's ship; or the clouds over Metropolis, the strange towering supercells that had formed over the World Engine and the dust and grit and smoke that had risen in the air; or anything else Clark doesn't want to think about.

It's just the same old endless Kansas sky. Faint low clouds, thin, with haze smudging out their edges, and the sun shining down warm. Clark looks up at it and sucks in a long slow breath, and for a second it's almost like none of it happened at all.

Except it did, and that's why he's here. The repairs to the farmhouse are just about done—are all done, now, if Clark really did get those last couple rows of shingles lined up right. He used the speed a little, and sometimes when he does that he knocks things askew in passing without even realizing it.

But when he finally lets his gaze drop to the roof, it looks okay. Not— _right_ , not like it should: the shingles are so unmistakably new, uniform, with perfect corners. There should be cracks, uneven edges, all the spots where the ice dammed up in the winter and pushed the shingles awry, that whole weird bubbly-melty stretch along the far side where Clark accidentally caught the tar with his vision that one time—

But all that is gone. Like all those years have been erased, like—

Like none of it happened at all.

"Clark?"

Clark blinks and turns, and after a second he remembers to smile, too. It feels a little weird on his face, a little stiff, but it probably looks okay. And even if Mom does notice—he's done with the roof. The flip side of never being able to get out of coming to see Mom is that he never has to stay either; she can't start making noises about how late it is, how long the drive will be, that dinner's almost ready anyway. He can just go.

And that's for the best.

Mom's leaning out over the porch railing with a glass in her hand—lemonade; Clark can see the pulp from here, can smell the citrus-sharp sweetness of it.

(He doesn't get hot or thirsty. She knows that. So she's bringing it to him just because—just because she wants to, just because she thinks he might like it. Just because she thinks he should get to have things he likes sometimes, and that's—)

Clark clears his throat, swipes at one eye so fast Mom probably doesn't even see it, and then he takes the three steps he has to take to get his hand around the glass and keeps smiling. "Thanks, Mom."

She doesn't let go of the glass right away. She's smiling back at him, but there's something strange about it, wry or maybe sorry, at the corners of her mouth and up around her eyes.

Yeah, she definitely noticed.

But she's merciful, or careful—or both—and doesn't ask. "I was going to apologize for interrupting," she says instead, "but I guess I haven't. All done?"

"Think so," Clark says, and doesn't have to meet her eyes anymore once he tips the glass up to take a sip. "Wasn't all that much."

Just the shingles—cosmetic, compared to rebuilding the wall and roof underneath, getting the insulation and pipes and wiring all back into place. Clark hadn't been able to do that. He hadn't even been able to help, at least not any more than a normal person; with the contractors and all, insurance assessor keeping track of their progress, it had to get done at a normal rate.

(Superpowered aliens throwing cars turned out to qualify legally as an act of God. Almost appropriate, Clark had thought when Mom had mentioned it. What had the World Engine been but a cataclysm—one designed to wipe Earth clean, and leave Kryptonians the only ones on the ark? Almost appropriate.)

"Well," Mom says lightly. "Nice to have that over with."

And Clark's starting to run out of lemonade; he has to lower the glass sooner or later. He swallows and sets it down on the porch railing, wipes his mouth, and risks a glance, and yeah, Mom's still giving him that funny look, patient and unwavering.

"Yeah," Clark says, looking away.

Right after it had happened, it hadn't felt possible. Almost one whole side of the house ripped away—and half of Metropolis blasted into rubble, but Clark had known what had happened to Metropolis needed to stop; he'd _felt_ it about the house. The house is home, in a way Metropolis won't ever be. And seeing it like that—it hadn't felt like it would ever be over with. It hadn't felt like it could ever be fixed.

But now it is. Now it is, and everything's fine. Like none of it happened at all.

"I don't suppose you'd like to stick around for dinner anyway," Mom says, too gently.

"No, no," Clark says, "I'd—I should get back," and he forces himself to look up again, drags a smile out from somewhere. "I've got work tomorrow."

"Clark—"

"Best thing for me, right? Routine." Half a laugh, there—and it sounds pretty good, Clark thinks. "It's okay, Mom, really. I'm fine, you're fine, and now the house is fine. Lois is fine, and the job's going to work out great, you'll see. Everything's okay."

Mom looks at him quietly, and—yeah, she isn't fooled one bit. But Clark keeps smiling anyway. And like this, standing by the porch with the faint sting of lemonade on his tongue, his hand over hers on the railing, the house intact behind her—like this, he finds he can almost mean it. That has to be good enough.

"All right," Mom says at last, and turns her hand over under his so she can squeeze his fingers. "Okay. But you're coming back on the weekend, you hear? I won't take no for an answer—"

"Okay, okay," Clark tells her, grinning, and squeezes her hand right back. "I fed myself for years, you know. _Years_."

"Hah," Mom says, narrowing her eyes; and she makes him drink the rest of the lemonade before she lets him leave.

 

 

*

 

 

He couldn't figure out how to explain it to Mom, it would have sounded weird, but he—he _wants_ to be back in Metropolis. He needs to be. It isn't about the apartment, which is still pretty bare; or the job at the Planet, which is still pretty new. It just—he just—

He just feels like he should. That's all. Smallville is fine, it was—the house, yeah, and a couple of silos, a street or two close by that ended up needing some serious roadwork, but that's not much of anything compared to Metropolis. Whole buildings were blown apart in Metropolis, and it was Clark's—

—it was—it shouldn't have happened. It should never have happened.

But it did. And somebody should be there, just like Mom and the contractors and the insurance for the house, to clean it up and make it whole; and there isn't anybody to do it except Clark.

So he flies back to his bare little apartment, and—thinking of Mom—eats something. And then he goes up on the roof and listens.

Maybe he's just tired—his mind, not his body. There are so many people in the city, there's so much that must be happening; maybe it's just because he isn't concentrating. Maybe that's why, for as long as he's up there, somehow the only thing he can hear is his own heart.

(He falls asleep up there, on the roof. He falls asleep and he dreams of a soft cracking sound, of the feeling of something giving way beneath his hands, and he wakes up with his face wet and doesn't know why.)

 

 

*

 

 

"Smallville. Hey—hey. Clark?"

Clark blinks. "What?"

Lois is eyeing him, arms crossed; but her stance softens so quickly when he looks up that it makes him wonder what it is she's seeing in his face. "Are you all right? You went home this weekend, didn't you, to work on the house? Your mother, is she—"

"Everything's fine, Lo," Clark says.

She seems unmoved: she looks at him closely for a moment longer, and then leans in a little closer across his desk. "If the job's not a good fit, that's okay. You know that, right?"

"Yes," Clark says, "yeah, it's—it isn't the job."

Which is true—Clark always loved the news when he was a kid, the whole world out there, ten thousand angles on the big messy complexity of humanity; getting to work for the Planet is probably going to be a great cover for ending up on the scenes of crimes as much as Clark's going to, but that's not the only reason he jumped on the idea.

But he still grimaces right after he says it. Rookie mistake: _it isn't the job_ implies that it _is_ something.

And—of course—Lois clocks it.

"Look," Clark says hurriedly, before she can pin him down. "I know I've been—it's been kind of a weird couple of months. But I'm okay. Mom is fine, the house is fine, the job's good. I'm adjusting. That's all."

Lois gives him a thoughtful stare, but all she says is, "All right." She leans farther, just enough to pat him on the arm with brisk warmth, and smiles at him, quick, before she gets up and goes back to her own desk.

Not that that's the end of it. Clark can feel her eyes on him, careful, every now and then. It's been like that almost the whole time he's been at the Planet, since right after the—right after he started.

And he bears up under it, just as well as always. Because everything's fine. Perry's grudgingly allowed him to graduate from fact-checking to writing short pieces of his own—always aggressively red-penned by Lois, of course, but Clark thinks he's starting to get the hang of Perry's editorial preferences. He gets his drafts back these days with only about half of it crossed out in Track Changes.

So: he types, he makes calls; he follows up, chases down references; he makes sure he eats lunch where Lois can see him. He's as okay as anybody could ask, all day long.

He gets a break in the midafternoon, when Lois gets called in to see Perry for a while, and he can't stop himself from sighing a little in relief when the door closes behind her.

(Being okay can be—hard, sometimes.)

Except when she comes out, the first thing that happens is she looks right at him, something odd and somber in the cast of her face; and the second thing is that behind her, Perry yells, "Kent!"

Clark gets up, gut sinking. Lois holds the door for him, and offers him half a smile as he passes her—but it doesn't reach her eyes, and Clark can't manage to smile back even though he knows he should.

 

 

*

 

 

"So," Perry says, once the door's shut.

He's propped himself against the edge of his desk; Clark can't decide whether that's better or worse than if he were sitting in his chair instead. Maybe better: he's still looking at Clark over steepled fingers, but without the distance the desk would put into it, without being quite so far away.

"I like throwing people into the deep end, Kent," Perry begins, tilting his head, "and Lane assures me you can swim, so to speak. But when pressed, she agreed with my assessment."

Clark has to swallow twice before he can say, "And what is your assessment, sir?"

He's expecting—he doesn't know what he's expecting, but it's not for Perry's face to go almost soft. "That it's been hard on you, son. Lane tells me you were in the city when it happened—Black Zero Day."

Clark looks down, and can't come up with a single word in reply. What is there to say? _You don't know the half of it, sir. You don't understand, you don't know who I—what I—_

"Not the best introduction to our fair city," Perry summarizes, dry and carefully light. "So, that said, I don't want to hear any complaining. This is a deliberate decision, Kent, I am coddling you and I know it."

"Sir?"

"Your first independent piece," Perry says, and reaches for a sheet on his desk, holds it up: a press release? "Human interest. I'm thinking an ongoing feature—once a week, maybe twice if you can generate enough material and stop making me cut half of it."

He wiggles the sheet pointedly, and Clark belatedly reaches up to take it, gaze catching on the logo in the header.

"It's good stuff, Kent," Perry is saying. "Sister cities, solidarity, togetherness—hope. Inspiring, exactly what everybody's looking for right now. People will love it."

"But this is—" and then Clark's brain catches up to his eyes.

"Wayne Enterprises," Perry says, and flicks one corner of the press release. "That office of theirs on 4th, the financial tower. Came down on Black Zero Day, but they're keeping the lot—rebuilding. And I want you to cover it."

 

 

* * *

 

 

The donation has gone through.

Bruce double-checks with the bank, and makes a note to have someone confirm with the children's home, just to be sure. The college fund that's been set up in Becky Forsythe's name won't do her any good until she's eighteen; making sure the city's children's services department has every possible resource Bruce can funnel to it is the next best way to help her.

There was a time when Bruce might have taken on that responsibility more directly, but—

(—just look how that had turned out for—)

—that simply isn't feasible, at this point.

He stares at the screen without actually looking at it. It's been a strange, haphazard process, recovering from Black Zero—for both cities, for everyone; like a three-legged race, Metropolis and Gotham suddenly tied together at the ankles, lurching helplessly, the old balance mercilessly elusive.

It seems almost unfair. The hard part should have been the event itself, the destruction, the lights in the sky and the shaking of the ground, the unfathomable and unstoppable terror of alien aggression. The hard part should have been over.

(For Bruce, it is; for Bruce, the hard part was—it—

It was so many crushed bodies, lying still in the dark. In the rubble; in the small lonely spaces. He couldn't—they were already gone when he got there, just like—there was nothing he could—)

"Sir?"

Bruce blinks, swallows, and carefully arranges his face into a look of casual boredom. "Hm? What is it—Jennifer, right?"

"Ginger, Mr. Wayne," and if the ten times she's already had to say that to Bruce this week are wearing on her nerves, she really isn't showing it. Bruce is going to have to find something else to try if he wants her to end up as frustrated with Bruce Wayne as the last dozen office assistants have been. "I just wanted to let you know that your schedule for tomorrow has been rearranged—you have a meeting with a reporter from—"

"Fine, fine, sure," Bruce says, carelessly waving away the details. "Might take tomorrow off anyway. You know how it is," he adds, and shoots Ginger a crooked smirk.

Ginger does not, in fact, know how it is: she hasn't taken a day off in months. Showed up the day after Black Zero, even, carrying Bruce Wayne's usual coffee order in one bandaged hand.

And had given it to him and then told him she'd heard about what he'd done for Wally Keefe—

(—as if he'd done anything; as if it mattered at all, as if he'd been something other than entirely fucking useless—)

—and thanked him for it.

Which may be the problem. He can't claim to regret it—in an actual crisis, with lives on the line, wasting time playing the game of Bruce Wayne would have been unforgivable. But the actions he took instead were unavoidably public, and he can't deny that they've created a few hiccups for him. Ginger's proven particularly difficult to irritate since then.

The smirk doesn't do the job, either. She looks at Bruce Wayne and her mouth maybe twitches just a little, and then she nods and says, "Up to you, sir," in a patient sort of way.

"Yep," Bruce Wayne says, popping the _p_ out with a little extra emphasis, a punctuational slap to the desk. "If I do come in, just make sure somebody reminds me, huh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thanks, Genevieve."

"Sure thing, sir," Ginger says without missing a beat, and doesn't even roll her eyes before she goes out and closes the door behind her.

 

 

*

 

 

Traffic patterns have almost returned to normal; the streets that are still closed are a known quantity, now, and ten million people's preferences when it comes to their choice of alternate routes have begun to settle into routine.

From the helicopter, things look fine. A little more construction going on than average, sure. But nothing is still smoking; the fires are all out. The rubble's been cleared away. Things look fine, and it's nice to think that maybe soon they will be.

But Bruce has never seen the point in indulging in the luxury of thinking nice things.

He spends the helicopter ride gazing down at the city, the bay, with Bruce Wayne's mindless stare, and considers the avenues he's intending to pursue. The landing pad, the elevator ride, the car—Bruce bears it with a patience Alfred would surely be proud of, and then the moment he's inside the lake house, he can finally head for the stairs and get to work.

Immediately after the event, his focus had been on one thing and one thing only. The first and most crucial step in any operation was reconnaissance—gathering intelligence. He'd been blindsided in every possible sense by the events of Black Zero, and that was unacceptable, unbearable: he needed to understand what had happened and how, whether there was anything he could do if it happened again, and he needed it as soon as he could get it.

Fortunately, a staggering amount of footage of the event and all its participants had been available, news channels mustering a thousand cameras; and Bruce had methodically scraped even more from social media, shaky smartphones and dashboard cameras adding a few hundred more angles.

And every single frame of it has directed him straight at this "Superman". Superman and that ship.

Bruce sits back in his chair, runs eight painstakingly time-synced files on three monitors, and watches again, though by now he knows the sequence of events so well he could probably sketch himself a flip-book version. This blast of flame; that tremor; those explosions; the toppling of a building that shows up from three of the angles as a distant smear of dust in the corner, and overwhelms a fourth with darkness like the end of the world. And, of course, that figure: streaking through the middle of it, flash of red and blue and a tiny personal vapor cone. Unimaginable power. Titans locked in combat—and humanity left to cower and seek shelter from the thunder and lightning cast by the clash of their weapons. One of the oldest stories in the world to explain the terror of an incomprehensible storm.

The videos loop around again, and Bruce leans in. Reconnaissance, gathering intelligence; and there are several hundred extremely good questions that all the video in the world can't answer.

Which is why he's starting to think he needs to find a way to get into that ship.

Kryptonian ship—Kryptonian weapons, and therefore by extension weapons Kryptonians had designed to use against each other, if they were anything like humans. Which means those weapons ought to be effective against Superman, and might be the only thing on the planet that is. Unless, of course, there are other factors involved that he can't control for. Kryptonians are evidently capable of surviving on Earth, but their homeworld must nevertheless be different, or there would be no reason for them to have begun such a drastic terraforming—kryptoforming—process. Bruce has run the analysis, the accompanying simulations, several times: there's a significant chance that Superman's superior acclimatization to Earth conditions contributed to his success.

Does Earth change the outcome? Will weapons that could hurt Kryptonians under Kryptonian conditions harm Superman less—or not at all? There's a certain terrible irony to the idea that Earth has made Superman so powerful nothing can save it from him.

(A terrible irony that feels like accuracy, to Bruce: of course that's how it will be. Of course this overwhelming potential for destruction is derived from inherent properties of Earth and of Superman respectively—they might as well have been made for this. Of course it was inevitable.

Bruce thinks it, and it feels true.)

Conjecture. The videos loop around again, and this time Bruce watches the ship: it's surprisingly clear in most of the amateur shots, people fighting with their autofocus as it selects a dozen subjects more obvious than the distant little figure of Superman. Bruce has no taste for being railroaded, but in this particular instance there's nowhere else to turn, no other source for the information he needs. It's conjecture, all of it—unless he can find a way to get inside that ship, and secure the answers for himself.

He glances up and toggles a feed to the foreground in one monitor. It was easy enough to attach a camera to the corner of one of the floodlights set up around the crashed ship, to keep an eye on things. It's been less easy to figure out how to do just about anything else.

But it's been months. In the first few days after Black Zero, it would have been utterly impossible—rescue operations had still been ongoing, and after that it had been cleanup crews, day and night, carting the rubble away and looking for bodies underneath. The probabilities have been improving ever since: the civilian crowds have dwindled as life stubbornly continues to go on, and security around the tentative government research installation is beginning to settle into recognizable routine.

Another week or two, and perhaps a shadow could slip by unnoticed at last—

"Sir."

"Alfred." Bruce doesn't look away from the monitors, because he doesn't have to. He can hear the clink of a plate, a cup, against the desk; and he can feel the vague dim chill of Alfred's disapproval, rolling into the Cave like fog.

"At it again, I see," Alfred murmurs, very evenly.

And Alfred can, in fact, see it for himself, so there's no point in replying. Bruce taps a couple keys, zooms in on three of the videos and then starts them all playing again.

"If I may ask, sir—"

Bruce sighs. "Alfred—"

"—has the seven-thousand-and-first viewing provided insight lacking after the seven-thousandth?" Alfred's tone is polite, inquiring, and utterly uncowed.

"Once the computer's finished with the virtual model of the ship," Bruce says, gesturing to a screen off to the side that's courteously displaying the associated progress bar, "I'll need to cross-check and make adjustments. And generate a secondary model that includes the damage."

"Yes, of course," Alfred agrees. "The ship," and then he leans in to peer pointedly at one of the monitors: widescreen, the highest definition Bruce had been able to locate, and—

And the ship is nothing but a dark blur in the background, depth of field oscillating around the figure of Superman in the air.

Bruce refuses to feel caught out; there's nothing to feel caught out for. "Know thine enemy," he says briskly, absently.

"Know thyself," Alfred says, very low.

Bruce looks up, the patience he's bound himself with all afternoon finally starting to fray. He feels about ready to thank Alfred for his input and ask him whether there isn't anything upstairs that needs doing—but Alfred isn't looking back. Alfred's still gazing at the screen, at the blue-and-red dart of Superman hurtling through the air, and there's something soft and nearly sorry in his face.

"Do you suppose he was afraid?"

Bruce spares the screen a glance. That's about the best view of Superman that's available during this sequence of events—Bruce has checked very, very thoroughly—and it's still impossible to guess what his expression might be. "By all accounts he's indestructible."

"Before this," Alfred says, undeterred. "When he learned they'd found him, when he saw their message. They said they'd destroy the planet if he didn't show himself. After blending in so well for so long—this must have been the last thing he wanted. What a choice to have to make."

Bruce doesn't glance up again. There's no point: he knows what's in the video. And he knows what's at stake here.

"I don't see that it matters," he says.

"Then I suppose it doesn't, sir," Alfred murmurs, and quietly walks away.

Which means Bruce can get back to work.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark doesn't realize how late it's gotten until the lights shut off. "Hey, sorry, could you—" he starts to say, automatic, and then his head comes up and he can see that it's Lois.

She's standing by the bank of office light switches, finger lined up to flip them all back on. And she can't see in the dark like Clark can, but her eyes are still on him, unerring—she put them there before she hit the lights, Clark thinks, knowing what he'd see when he looked up.

She waits a single precise beat, because she knows how to write a story. And then with a four-fold _click!_ the lights come back on, and she tilts her head and says gently, "Smallville. What happened?"

Clark looks away. "What did you tell Perry?"

Lois lets out half a breath, and then crosses the room, rounds the corner of the desk and touches his hand. "Oh, Clark," she says. "I hardly had to tell him anything. You've been so—" She stops, and then gestures helplessly at the empty office: at Clark, sitting in it alone, and the windows, the darkness outside. Not lost for words, but she knows when a picture's worth a thousand of them.

And it's not like Clark can argue. He grimaces at his keyboard. This is the third time this has happened, and—he sneaks a glance at his watch and grimaces again—the latest it's been when she's found him. He doesn't _mean_ to, he never has. It feels like it was maybe fifteen minutes ago that he'd let himself out of Perry's office and come over here to sit down. He'd done fine in Perry's office, Perry hadn't seen anything; but all that meant was that it had been waiting for him after, held off but not gone, ready to drag him down.

(The screaming, it had been—he'd been able to hear _all_ of it, even in the middle of the—)

"He just wanted to know what I thought," Lois is saying. "He didn't say it in so many words, but you're new and he likes you, and Black Zero was—the whole city is a mess. He's a mess. _I'm_ a mess," and she laughs and shakes her hair back and has to swipe a sudden wetness away from the corners of her eyes before she looks at Clark again. "He didn't want to lose you, that's all. Didn't want to give you something too tough, not right now, but he didn't want to insult you with something too easy. He was looking for a second opinion, and I gave him one."

"Oh," Clark says, looking down again.

"Clark? What did he—"

"Wayne Enterprises," he says, because he doesn't want to have to wait through her finishing the question when he knows what she's asking—doesn't want this to take any longer than it has to. "The building—one of their buildings, the financial office in Metropolis. It came down, and they're—he wants me to—"

It's not a bad thing. It's—it's important, to cover the process of reconstruction and recovery. And Clark should—this is all his—he should have to look at it. Shouldn't he? He should have to look at it, to see the things that have happened to this city because of him. It would be wrong to do anything else.

(Dad would have thought so.)

But his game face isn't good enough for Lois, because she knows what Perry didn't. "Oh, _Clark_ ," she says, and squeezes his hand, ducks in close to press her forehead to his temple. "Clark, I'm sorry—I didn't know that was one of the options he had in mind—"

He closes his eyes. "Could have been worse," he says, aiming for light. "Could have been the train station."

But that lands like a lead balloon. Lois goes still, doesn't say anything; for a moment Clark's pretty sure she's not even breathing.

And then she settles her free hand against the back of his neck, steady and warm, and says, "Clark. Clark, do you need to talk about—"

He doesn't even decide to move. He just—already has, somehow, before she's even finished saying it. He's halfway across the room and breathing hard, even though it couldn't possibly qualify as an exertion, not for him; and Lois is braced next to his empty chair with her hair only just starting to settle from the breeze he made.

She blinks and catches her breath, twists to look for him, and she doesn't even look scared—just worried, just sad.

"Sorry," Clark says quickly, "sorry. I just, I can't—"

"No, no, it's okay," Lois says, holding her hands up. Like he's the one with something to be frightened of; like she's the one who needs to be careful. "It's all right."

(—a soft cracking sound, and the feeling of something giving way beneath his hands—)

"I'm sorry," Clark says again, and he's not sure who he's saying it to. "I didn't mean to—I didn't _want_ to—"

He presses his hands to his face before the sting in his eyes can turn into anything else; and Lois says, "I know, Clark. It's okay," from much closer, a second before her arms come up around him and squeeze tight.

"I'm sorry—"

"Yeah, yeah, you're a mess too," Lois murmurs into his hair, and doesn't let go. "Join the club, Smallville. It's okay."

 

 

*

 

 

Clark feels a little better about it the next morning. It's an interview, and he's not so bad at talking to people one-on-one. An ongoing feature means he's going to have some time to figure this out, to decide what angle he wants to take or to try a couple different ones and see what Perry likes. And the building, the lot where it was, won't be—they'll have cleaned things up by now. It won't be the way it was on Black Zero. There's nothing to be afraid of.

So he feels better about it. And Lois can probably tell, or else she wouldn't have started giving him such terrifying advice.

"Don't smile at him," she says, "or he'll take it as an excuse to leer. Don't call him 'Brucie', either—same reason. Basically anything he says while _he's_ smiling is bullshit, and if you take it seriously in any way he'll start hitting on you instead of answering your questions—"

"This _is_ Bruce Wayne we're talking about, right?" Clark says. He hadn't done any googling or anything, just some baseline research on Wayne Enterprises itself; it hadn't seemed right to go to an interview like this with a bunch of preconceptions based on online gossip. But surely— "He's the CEO, not a drunk fratboy."

"Bruce Wayne is the CEO _and_ a drunk fratboy," Lois says, and straightens Clark's tie. "Just stay on the opposite side of the desk from him and try to get a quote that will sound halfway decent out of context. He'll probably sleaze his way out of it and get somebody else to take over about five minutes in, anyway." She smiles at him and pats his cheek, and then adds, "Now get going, Smallville. I have my own shit to do today, and you don't want to be late."

"Yes, ma'am," Clark says, and when he tacks on a little salute, she laughs and shoos him away.

He rides the bright warmth that puts in his chest all the way down to the street. But—

But it gets harder after that. Not bad—not sitting-in-a-dark-room-alone bad. Just harder. He has to pass some construction on his way to the temporary Wayne Enterprises office; some construction, and the vast ragged pit in the street that they're trying to fill in with it, with the sidewalk, the cement, still blackened and scraped—

(—the _smell_ of it, smoke and ozone—smoke and ozone and _flesh_ —)

"You okay?"

Clark blinks and looks up. A woman's paused and touched his shoulder, waiting for him to meet her gaze; and the pedestrians around them aren't just brushing past but slowing, skimming his face with careful eyes, nodding a little before they go by. Because—

Because he came to a stop right in front of one of the memorials. The sidewalk ahead of him, the wall next to it, is covered with pictures, taped and pinned and pasted every which way; and flowers are piled up underneath, cards and candles and a single tuxedo-patterned lucky cat figurine.

Clark swallows and tries a smile. "Yes," he says, and it comes out weird and sort of scraped but the woman doesn't look at him funny for it. "Yes, I'm—it's fine. Thanks."

"All right," she says, and squeezes his arm for just a second, sympathetic, before she lets go and keeps walking. Expressing solidarity, because she thinks he's like her: that he was on the ground, helpless, ordinary—that Black Zero happened to him like it happened to everybody else. Because she thinks he deserves it.

But that doesn't have anything to do with Bruce Wayne. Clark shakes himself and starts walking again; maybe he'll buy some flowers on the way back, to leave here. He'll get to the Wayne Enterprises office, and he'll go in and find Bruce Wayne's office, and he'll be polite—which includes smiling, no matter what Lois said. He'll ask his questions, get a feel for the project, decide on an angle. Maybe he can get in touch with the architect, even if he doesn't pry anything useful out of Bruce Wayne. It'll be fine.

 

 

*

 

 

It's not fine.

Clark's gameplan falls apart—well, just about where Lois had said it would, so probably he should have listened to her. He obviously doesn't have any trouble getting to the building, or finding the right floor once the receptionist tells him where Wayne's office is.

But then Wayne's personal assistant shows him in, and he smiles and holds out his hand, and Bruce Wayne happens to him.

"Hello, Mr. Wayne—I'm—"

"One second," Mr. Wayne says, without looking up from his phone. He chuckles a little, swipes once and then again with his thumb, and then sets his fingers against the screen and splays them like—is he zooming in on a Grumpy Cat meme?

Clark clears his throat. Polite, he reminds himself. Even if Mr. Wayne can't manage the same in return. "Excuse me, Mr. Wayne. Mr. Wayne?"

"Hm?" Mr. Wayne says. "Look, you're better off getting Georgia—"

"Ginger," someone murmurs on the edge of Clark's hearing, half a sigh, on the other side of Mr. Wayne's office door.

"—back in here and asking her whatever it is you want to know."

"If you weren't the right person to ask," Clark says, "my appointment wouldn't be with you, Mr. Wayne."

"Your appointment is with me because I'm the only person in this building who doesn't have real work to do," Mr. Wayne says, still captivated by his phone, and Clark honestly can't tell who he's trying to insult most, Clark or himself.

And then Mr. Wayne looks up—and blatantly double-takes. Clark freezes in place. Is there something on his face? Did Lois do something to his hair before he left? Draw a smiley face, or a dick—or both—on the tie?

"And I wouldn't be complaining about it," Mr. Wayne murmurs, "if they'd sent a picture."

Clark gapes at him—which should by all rights put paid to any impression on Mr. Wayne's part that Clark is attractive—and feels himself flush, slow heat crawling into his cheeks and up his ears. "Uh—Mr. Wayne—"

"Bruce, please," Mr. Wayne says, with a sudden warm smile, sliding the phone onto his desk and standing to take Clark's still-outstretched hand. His handshake's fine, solid; he hangs on a little longer than Clark thinks is normal, and he's—taller than Clark had realized.

His suit fits him really well.

Clark clears his throat again. "Thank you in advance for your time, Mr. Wayne," he says. "I just have a few questions about the office tower you're constructing—reconstructing—on 4th, and then I'll get out of your way."

"Oh, I'd rather you were in it," Mr. Wayne murmurs. He still hasn't let go of Clark's hand. "In fact, I can think of quite a few things I'd like you to be in—"

"Mr. Wayne," Clark says firmly, and tugs his hand away with an extremely polite smile. Jesus, what is this guy's problem? How did somebody like this ever become CEO of anything? "If you have a copy of the building plans that we could look over while we talk, that would be great."

Mr. Wayne's eyes narrow for a split second; and then his smile gets even wider. "Sure, sure," he says, breezy. "I think we've got something like that lying around." He's leaning in just a hair closer than he should be, just enough to make Clark want to back up; but on principle alone, it seems like a bad idea to cede ground. Clark frowns a little and doesn't move, and Mr. Wayne laughs, a quick half-breath through his nose, before he shifts away and waves a hand. "Should be over there. Give me a moment and I'll have Gina get you the architect's contact information, all right? I bet she'll be much more help to you than I will." He winks.

And then he steps away, turns around. It's like a spotlight has swung off Clark, or a change in the air pressure—Mr. Wayne's focused attention somehow manages to take up a tremendous amount of space. Having it lift so suddenly is almost a relief.

Clark takes the opportunity to actually look around the office. Rented space, and maybe it's just because he knew that going in, but it feels almost like he can tell. Bruce Wayne's office furniture is all—sleek, expensive; chrome and plate glass and black leather. If Clark had to guess, the floors in most WE buildings are black, too, and that's what makes it work. But this building has warm bright wood, varnished. Doesn't quite suit.

Mr. Wayne's desk puts his back to the windows—though if the way he was sitting when Clark first came in is any indicator, he tends to slouch sideways. Probably even puts his feet up. Clark can't help imagining Mom striding in and smacking them off again, giving Mr. Wayne a stern look; he almost laughs, but manages to turn it into a small cough instead.

And there's a table, separate from Mr. Wayne's desk, still chrome and glass but with several less extravagant chairs positioned around it—where people who do real work sit, Clark thinks, when they need to talk to Mr. Wayne. That's where Mr. Wayne had been waving toward, that table, and Clark takes a step closer and sees that it is in fact stacked with blueprints. Blueprints, diagrams, annotated quotes for materials, and—

Clark frowns and moves nearer, shifting sideways around the table until most of what he can see is right-side-up. There's something sticking out from underneath the other papers: pages of—photographs, it looks like. A whole binder of them. People, all kinds of different people, men and women and a few children, mostly smiling at the camera; but not always. Some of them are portraits, but some just look like candids—one woman is turned half away, a sunset caught in the background of her profile, braids spilling over her shoulder.

"They're the people who died."

Clark jerks around. Mr. Wayne has finished talking to his assistant, has closed his office door again, and is standing there with his arms crossed, watching Clark. When Clark meets his eyes, he offers up a jarringly bland smile.

"When the building came down," Mr. Wayne clarifies. "On 4th. They're the people who died.

"Not all of them were employees—some of them were independent contractors, or kids in the child care center. Some of them were on the street outside. Parts of the building seem to have just been vaporized, and temperatures got pretty high in others, but everyone we were able to find and identify is in there."

"Why?" Clark says unsteadily, because—because he's a reporter, and reporters ask questions.

(Because he wants to hear someone say it.)

And Mr. Wayne shrugs a shoulder, but his answer is anything but noncommittal. "Because they're going into the new one. I'm not sure we've settled on a technique yet," he adds. "It would be easiest to do hanging portraits, but the architect is interested in pursuing something that would place the images directly onto the walls—maybe ceramic on glass, but we've had trouble getting a quote—"

But that isn't what Clark wants to know. "Why," he says again, more quietly.

And that, of all things, makes Mr. Wayne's gaze turn sharp. That makes Mr. Wayne look almost angry— _angry_ , as though he hadn't been clasping Clark's hand and leering into his face, gleefully piling on innuendo, not five minutes ago.

"To remember them, Mr. Kent. To honor them. To make it so we can't ever be foolish enough to forget what we've lost, to forget that it matters. You journalists—" and Mr. Wayne waves a hand at Clark, dismissive; almost enough to remind Clark of the man he'd first walked in on, the one who wouldn't look up from his smartphone, except this version is just a shade too bitter to match. "You and your 24-hour news cycle, your breathless thinkpieces about aliens, about existential crises and politics and God, about _Superman_ —" and Mr. Wayne breaks off and laughs, cutting and unamused. "As if he did them any good. As if any of it does."

Clark doesn't reply. How could he?

(He wanted to hear someone say it.)

He looks down instead, pressing his hand flat over the page of photographs; his fingertips end up splayed across that woman's profile, the line of her throat and chin—just like they would be if he had his hands wrapped around her neck, if he were about to—

He realizes distantly that that sound is the table—the glass top of it, creaking with strain, a high singing whine no human would be able to hear. He sucks in a breath and wrenches himself backward before it can break, and manages to drag his head up long enough to say, "Excuse me, Mr. Wayne, I'm—I need a minute," before he brushes past and tugs the door open and gets himself out of there.

 

 

*

 

 

The bathrooms are easy to find—Clark doesn't even have to ask. He can just take a quick glance through the walls, looking for the plumbing.

And looking to make sure there isn't anyone else inside, which there isn't. The water is cold, a perfect sharp shock when he splashes it on his face; and then he stands there leaning over the sink, staring at his own wet reflection in the mirror, and can't even say what it is he's looking for.

It happens just like the other night: for a minute, he can't seem to hear anything except his own breathing, his own heart beating. So there's no approaching footsteps to warn him, and he turns at the creak of the door opening—just like Clark Kent ought to.

It is—of course—Mr. Wayne.

Clark just stares at him for a second; and then Wayne raises an eyebrow, and Clark realizes his eyelashes are still dripping and hurries over to the paper towel dispenser. "Sorry for the interruption, Mr. Wayne, I'll only be a minute—"

"It's all right, Mr. Kent," Wayne says, more carefully than Clark might have expected.

Clark buries his face in the paper towel, but Wayne doesn't seem to take this as a hint; Clark hears the door close, but not because Wayne's stepped back through it.

"Mr. Wayne," Clark says, wiping at his forehead with a corner, "this really isn't—"

"You were in the city," Wayne interrupts. "On the day."

That's one way of putting it. Clark manages not to laugh—balls the towel up instead, throws it away, and doesn't look up. "Yes. I was."

"But you're not from around here."

Another thing that's a little more true than Wayne intends it to be. "No," Clark agrees. "No, I'm—new in town."

"Bad timing," Wayne observes mildly, after a moment, and that does make Clark laugh.

He turns around—and then tilts his head back, leans into the wall beside the dispenser, and lets himself slide down until he's sitting on the gleaming tile floor. It's not appropriate, Clark's supposed to be working; but Wayne's an inappropriate guy. He won't mind.

And, sure enough, he looks down at Clark with his head tilted, hands in the pockets of his perfectly-tailored slacks, and doesn't say anything.

At least not about Clark's choice of seat. After a beat of conspicuous silence, he does say, "I was, too."

Clark looks up.

"Here, in the city," Wayne adds. His gaze shifts from Clark to the middle distance, and for a moment his whole face has changed, turned stark and serious. "One of the people in that book you were looking at—Jack O'Dwyer. I was on the phone with him when it happened. I was just down the street from the office on 4th when it came down."

"And you're all right now?" Clark says, trying to guess where Wayne's going with this. "You gave it time, and you're—"

"No," Wayne says, unhesitating, oddly calm considering what he's saying. "No, Mr. Kent. For me, I think that ship has sailed," and Clark almost believes it, in that instant: Wayne looks so _tired_. But then his gaze snaps back to Clark's face and he smiles. "But you will be."

"What?" Clark says, the thread lost.

"All right," Wayne says, and shifts one foot over far enough to nudge Clark's scuffed dress shoe with his own Italian leather. "You will be, Mr. Kent. It'll take longer than you want it to, and it won't feel quite the same as it used to. But one day you'll realize you've gotten there anyway.

"And in the meantime, even if you're not all right?" and his tone changes just enough, goes light enough and slick enough that Clark is almost ready for the slow deliberate wandering of his eyes: down Clark's throat, the line of his tie, his bent knees that suddenly feel too far apart— "I can personally assure you that you'll still be _fine_."

It's such a ludicrous thing to say that Clark can only gape—gape and then snort, helplessly, at the sheer brass-balled ridiculousness of it.

"Now hurry up and get off my floor, Mr. Kent," Wayne adds. "Time is money—businesspeople say that kind of thing, don't they?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce lets the bathroom door swing shut behind him without waiting, to give Kent an extra thirty seconds if he wants them—and to give himself an extra thirty seconds to decide just how damaging a lapse that was.

It could have been worse. Bruce Wayne is allowed to show the occasional flash of integrity, when the circumstances are dire enough; Black Zero had necessitated it, and it's only reasonable that he'd be affected by the aftermath, just like everyone else. It would be stranger if he weren't, in point of fact—if anything, Bruce Wayne is meant to be too much at the mercy of whim and inconstant sentiment, rather than impervious to it.

Besides, that final execrable line had done a lot to overshadow the rest of it, if the expression that had been on Kent's face before the door closed was any indication.

Bruce just has to try not to make any more mistakes with Kent. That's all.

 

 

*

 

 

He's sublimely irritating for the rest of the interview—fidgeting, fiddling with things, tossing a stapler from hand to hand; answering as many questions as possible with vague non-answers or too-intent come-ons. Kent is terrible at hiding his frustration, eyebrows drawing closer together with every wink Bruce throws in, the perfect stern frown line over the bridge of his nose carving itself deep.

So it's not going to be a problem, Bruce thinks. Kent will decide it was an aberration—that just because Bruce Wayne can say one thoughtful thing, that doesn't mean he isn't a dick. It'll be fine.

And he thinks that right up until the interview ends. Kent purses his lips, manages to dredge up something polite about how he's got enough to work with for now and he appreciates having been allowed to take up Bruce's time—and then he shakes his head, glances down at his notepad, and for some reason starts to smile.

He reaches out for Bruce's hand, and this time he's the one who pauses, dragging the handshake out, broad fingers gentling suddenly against Bruce's palm. "Thank you," he says quietly; and then again, more firmly, "Thank you. You're an ass, Mr. Wayne—" and he flashes the smile a little wider for a moment, a little warmer. "—but you were kind to me and I'm grateful for it. I won't forget it."

Damn. "You ought to be a little more careful about saying that to me," Bruce says aloud, with a carefully-calibrated leer. "I'm not very restrained about calling in IOUs, Mr. Kent."

But Kent doesn't blink. "I'll keep that in mind, Mr. Wayne," he says, with one last firm shake; and then he's out the door, nodding to Ginger as he passes her desk.

A little good press won't hurt Wayne Enterprises, Bruce supposes. And this is meant to be some kind of ongoing feature. Bruce will have plenty of time to disabuse Kent of any unnecessarily generous notions he's having about Bruce Wayne.

 

 

*

 

 

All thoughts of Kent and what he did or didn't see are set aside for the day once Bruce is back in the Cave. His focus on Superman needs to be absolute.

Bruce slots himself into place in front of the bank of monitors, and the alert that had popped up on his phone earlier repeats itself: a flag has come up, one of the notifications he put in place to track any new developments regarding the crashed ship.

On the phone, it had just been an alert—here, he can finally dig into the context. He's been tracking government contracts up for bid, and one has appeared that's pinged all the parameters he put in place; it doesn't mention the ship or Metropolis directly, but he wouldn't expect it to, and 92 percent of the keywords he _would_ expect have been used in the associated text. And—

Bruce feels his eyebrows rise. It's nothing concrete, just a pattern of movement: assets being shifted and in certain cases reactivated; social media chatter from a low-level employee, who's going to be stuck late at work pulling together unspecified paperwork for an unnamed bid.

He fires off a quick email from one of his burner accounts, and receives confirmation from his contact within twenty minutes.

And that's not concrete either, but it's as close as Bruce can get today. Which raises the question: what does Lex Luthor want with that ship?

Bruce has been monitoring it, trying to work out a way to crack it, because it's the obvious angle; but in some ways it's a little too obvious. He's accepted the idea that the ship may be his best shot, but he's been reluctant to assign it too much weight. In theory, it's simply bad strategy—if all his time and energy is devoted solely to the ship and then the ship proves useless, he's back at square one. Better to find multiple avenues to pursue, and balance the most promising among them until one pays off. And in practice—

In practice, surely Superman wouldn't be stupid enough to leave something capable of killing him sitting in the middle of Metropolis. The ship's weaponry is still of interest, given the potential for Bruce to reverse-engineer or adapt it into something that _can_ kill Superman; and anything else Bruce can get out of it, data or system logs, information on Kryptonian linguistics or biology or even building materials—something that might be able to stand up to Superman or take a hit from him—will undoubtedly prove valuable one way or another.

But if Lex Luthor is after it—

Perhaps it's simply a matter of recognizing the mundane potential inherent in the ship. What can be gleaned from that thing won't be at the cutting edge of R&D so much as the _bleeding_ edge, leaps and bounds ahead of any competitor in the same field working with terrestrial resources. Perhaps it's just LexCorp pursuing an opportunity.

But Lex Luthor is on Bruce's radar for a reason. Nothing's ever been pinned on him, no charges have ever been filed; but over the years, Bruce has heard his name in the wrong places enough times and tripped over enough circumstantial evidence to know that Luthor's worth keeping an eye on. And if he's able to get out of the ship what Bruce intends to get out of it—the last thing Bruce would ever want is Superman on a LexCorp leash.

Bruce eyes the contract description one more time, and then glances up at the screen where completed 3D renders of the ship—damaged and undamaged models, both displayed separately and layered over each other—are rotating slowly.

It would, of course, only be reasonable for Wayne Enterprises to prepare a competing bid. They've taken government research contracts before, and on the surface, this one isn't out of the ordinary. Having jumped on it so quickly himself, Luthor can't get any mileage out of questioning Bruce's motives; for all he knows, Bruce Wayne is reflexively, mindlessly reacting to the decisions of a business rival, pursuing this contract solely because he caught wind of a rumor that LexCorp had gone after it first.

And no matter where the contract is awarded in the end, Batman should be capable of beating them both to the punch.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark feels—better, on his way back to the Planet building.

Not _good_ ; not all right. But better, sort of. He hasn't laughed much since Black Zero—he hadn't even realized it, until he did today and it felt strange, unfamiliar. But Wayne was funny. In a kind of terrible way, but: Clark had laughed. It counted.

And it lasts for a good long while, that better feeling. He sits down and types up his notes from the interview—everything useful, not the parts where Wayne had tricked him into starting to write down what sounded like a real answer only to swap partway through to yet another pick-up line. And he's starting to think Wayne handed him a good angle to use for the feature. He'll need permission from the families, a chance to sit down and talk to them, but he's thinking profiles to match the portraits: a weekly memorial, a public acknowledgment of—what had Wayne said? _What we've lost. That it matters._ It feels like the right thing to do.

Not that Clark's the best judge of that.

It feels like the right thing to do—but he stares at his notes, his screen, and finds himself wishing somebody else were doing it. This shouldn't be up to him. Everyone whose picture is in that binder in Wayne's office is there because—because he couldn't—what right does he have? He isn't the one who should be speaking for them.

But then again, maybe he owes it to them. To the whole city, which lost them and doesn't even realize it—which ought to know what got taken, what exactly it is that's gone and won't ever come back. Maybe it ought to be Clark.

(He heard them screaming. And then he heard them stop—)

Wayne was kind to him. But Wayne doesn't know—doesn't know how deep it goes, how much of it was Clark; he doesn't know who he was talking to. And if he had, would he still have said it? Clark thinks of the way Wayne had spat _aliens_ , and _Superman_ , and is pretty sure he knows the answer.

 

 

*

 

 

So by the evening it's gone, that better feeling; it's drained away. Clark at least remembers to get out of his chair, this time, and manages not to be the last one in the office. He's got his notes typed up, an outline taking shape, another appointment with Wayne Enterprises and a voicemail left for the architect. Perry won't have anything to complain about.

He leaves and he walks back to his apartment, and he does it at a relentless, impassable distance from—from everything, a muted empty vastness yawning wide between him and everyone else who's an arm's length away on the same street.

The distance gets smaller, paradoxically, once he's up on the roof. He's focused this time, ready, with the uniform on and everything. He opens himself up, carefully concentrating—he's not going to let his hearing get stuck the way it has been, his own body and nothing else. And then—

Then he just ends up listening. There's a family somewhere, eating dinner together—takeout, Thai, and teasing one another for getting the same thing every single time, no matter how long they all spend poring over the menu. A man who lives alone not far away, feeding his cats and scolding them, telling them in a fond tone how fat they are and wondering how they can be so fat and so picky at the same time. A girl trying to get the lock on her bike undone, cursing and laughing alternately as the friend standing next to her makes fun of her. All these bits and pieces of Metropolis that _haven't_ been lost, that are still here after everything. He stands up there and listens to them, and it feels almost like he isn't alone.

But that's wrong. He is alone. He's alone and that's for the best—Mom is safe at home, and Kryptonians—

Kryptonians tore this city apart. It's good that Clark is the only one left. These people don't know him, they're—they don't know he's listening to them. He shouldn't even be doing it. He knows better; Mom stopped needing to give him that lecture when he was about twelve. He knows better than to use his powers on people like that unless someone is in danger.

He sucks in a breath and makes himself widen the scope: the soundscape of Metropolis in the evening just laid out around him, not picking out anybody specific. Impersonal. If he hears a shout, a sob, he'll focus in, and if it's something Superman can help with, then Superman will help. That's all.

He's alone up here, and that's how it should be. Anything else is courting disaster.

 

 

*

 

 

Except he can't spend all his time alone in the dark on the roof of his apartment building. Clark Kent's got a weekly feature to plan.

The whole way to Wayne's office, he's bracing himself, trying to imagine what nonsense Wayne will come up with this time. Maybe he should just ask Ginger for contact information, for the families—maybe not saying anything to Wayne at all is the better part of valor. (Would he get strange and severe again? Or just make an awful off-color joke? Which would bother Clark more? He can't decide.)

But when he actually reaches Ginger's desk, she looks up at him with a rueful smile and says, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kent—Mr. Wayne has stepped out for the afternoon."

Clark blinks. "For the afternoon," he repeats.

"For the whole day," Ginger amends. "Or at least—he told me not to expect him back, and to clear his schedule. I reminded him that you were coming, and he said you'd be better off talking to Ms. Syl directly anyway. She's waiting for you one floor down."

Cyndia Syl—the architect. It's not exactly a disappointment, Clark had been hoping to talk to her too; but all the same he finds something in his gut has sunk a little, hearing that Wayne's dodged him.

But that's all right. Wayne's dodging, fine. That doesn't mean Clark has to let him get away with it.

"Will he be in tomorrow?"

"I'm afraid I can't say," Ginger tells him—which is both the non-answer she's probably supposed to give and the truth, Clark suspects. For all she knows, Wayne's going to decide to spend tomorrow in Tahiti.

"All right," Clark says, and smiles at her. "In that case, I'll come back then."

"Mr. Kent," Ginger says, looking a little uncomfortable now; but Clark smiles a little wider and shakes his head.

"No, no, it's okay. I'll be back then, and the day after. And," Clark adds, "every day after that until he happens to be in again. If you have the opportunity, please tell him I said so."

And Ginger looks at Clark for a second with her eyes narrowed, and then starts to smile back. "All right, Mr. Kent," she says, and there's a hint of real warmth somewhere under her brisk polished tone. "I'll—let him know. If I have the opportunity."

"Great," Clark says. "Thank you so much. And Ms. Syl is downstairs, you said?"

"One floor," Ginger confirms, "in the office across from the elevator. Have a wonderful day, Mr. Kent," and Clark thinks maybe she even means it.

It might be stupid—it's probably stupid—but this feels like it's the one thing Clark can _do_ , suddenly. Everything else is hard, hard, all the time, long endless mire; but this single thing, being stubborn at Bruce Wayne, won't be hard. Not like that. And Clark's discovering that whether he's the right person to write it or not, this feature matters to him: the things it should show, the things it will say, it's—it matters. It's not life-and-death, not a crisis, not a Superman thing. But it matters.

So he'll go downstairs and talk to Cyndia Syl about her vision, about Wayne Enterprises and Metropolis and why she chose to take on this project. And then he'll come back, as many times as it takes for him to get something real out of Bruce Wayne.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce presses himself flat against the hull of the ship and listens.

He'd had four and a half seconds to cross almost fifty meters without drawing attention. A week of simulations and a single field test had demonstrated that the security and surveillance systems currently deployed around the ship could be disrupted for a maximum of five seconds before an automated alert would go off. And Bruce hadn't wanted to count on taking the entire five seconds.

It had been easier to figure out where to make the entry than it had been to figure out how it would be done—there simply weren't enough personnel for the research installation to cover the entire ship, so a section had been chosen as a starting point and the rest had been marked off. Only the outer security net needed to be bypassed; on the inside, entire decks of the ship lie empty, unmonitored.

And now Bruce has made the dash to one of them. It only remains to be seen whether—

"No movement of personnel on this end, sir," Alfred murmurs, over the comm securely tucked into Bruce's ear. "It would appear that you have in fact gone unnoticed."

"Understood," Bruce says, so softly the Bat's modulator doesn't even activate; but his microphone sensitivity is at its maximum. Alfred will hear him.

The mission, the priorities, are clear. There's no time to waste: it's impossible to say whether Bruce will be able to access the Kryptonian systems at all, whether they'll even _be_ computers in any way Bruce is capable of understanding that word. Even if he can access them, he may not be able to retrieve or copy any of the data stored in them, and even if he can retrieve or copy the data, he may not be able to translate it into something any human computer system, or even a human mind, can parse. He needs to stay focused, to keep his mind on the tasks in front of him and make his assessments as quickly and as accurately as he can.

But it's impossible not to cast a few unnecessary glances around the corridors as he searches for anything that resembles a console. The cowl's low-light vision apparatus is catching glimmers of something that isn't color but is nevertheless patterned, even decorative, arching across the walls and ceiling—and there had been no sign of any such thing in any of the day-lit footage that had caught portions of the interior, but Bruce supposes it's not out of the question to think Kryptonians see in wavelengths human eyes don't. And the walls themselves, the structure of the place, is so—streamlined. There's something almost organic about it, a sense of radial symmetry reminiscent of certain terrestrial sea life. It's so vast and strange and silent; unsettling and lovely at the same time.

"Hm," Alfred says, and Bruce refocuses his attention instantly.

"'Hm'?"

"I was just reviewing what little we've been able to access of the existing research done to date." Alfred makes another small considering sound. "So much is made of the apparent complexity of it all—the few automatic functions that have been activated here and there are simply improbable without a staggeringly advanced technological foundation."

"And?" Bruce says absently, slowing with a frown. The ship is profoundly alien, yes; Kryptonians might possess abilities of which Bruce knows nothing; but it still seems odd that he hasn't passed a single hatch or doorway—

"It occurs to me, sir," Alfred muses, "that even if the installation personnel are thoroughly ignorant of your ingress, there may yet be someone else who is not."

Bruce frowns, even though the lion's share of his attention is still devoted to scouring the nearest walls for signs of hidden panels or keypads he's missed. Alfred knows how much Bruce hates it when he's cryptic on mission comms. "Unusual readings on the monitors?"

"A profound understatement, sir," Alfred says, sounding both terribly dry and a bit distracted.

And then Bruce has to fight not to hurl himself up the wall when someone else says, very clear and polite, "Are you in need of assistance?"

 

 

*

 

 

He manages to restrain his reaction to a change in stance, a tensing of muscle; his heart kicks up a couple of gears, but his breathing remains steady. Because nothing else would do him any good. The voice isn't coming from a person.

It's coming from the ship.

"Good lord," Alfred murmurs; evidently that maximized microphone sensitivity is adequate to pick up the ship's speech.

Bruce ignores the sudden artificial clarity to his vision, his hearing—adrenaline, it will ease off soon enough—and weighs his options. "Yes," he says carefully. "I am."

"Please state the type of assistance required," the ship offers.

"I need access to a data interface," Bruce says evenly.

The ship is briefly silent. "You are not associated with the active research installation investigating Vrrosh Ghehn, but your technological capabilities register as comparable. Is this assessment accurate?"

For the span of a single moment of vanity, Bruce wants to say no—the suit is beyond anything the researchers could possibly be equipped with. But—

But however vast the difference between 102 and 103 might appear, they're both a miniscule fraction of 101000. All things are relative, and the Gotham Bat has never been so painfully outstripped in all the time he's existed. Bruce would call it humbling, if his heart weren't still pounding a little too hard for reasons that have nothing to do with surprise.

"Yes," he says, and then, to see whether the ship will answer, "I—couldn't understand some of your terminology just then. Can you rephrase?"

"Apologies," the ship says, and it actually does sound faintly aggrieved. "While progress absorbing the linguistic modes and variations of this world meets predefined standards for system function, the data set available is limited in size. The inventory of lexical items required is incomplete at this time, and a certain subset of both constants and variables governing colloquial use remains undefined."

Which is apparently true, if that's the shortest way it can come up with to say "I'm not sure I know the right words yet" in English. Bruce huffs out a breath, but before he can try another angle on the question, something about the wall opposite shifts—and by the time he's turned to look at it, there's an opening that definitely wasn't there before.

Bruce had been prepared for as many different eventualities as he could come up with. For the ship's systems to be incomprehensible to him; for the need to memorize or record any display he did happen across; for whatever method Kryptonians used to store or compress data to be impossible for him to unravel using even the Cave's computers—if they even conceived of data the same way, if they even stored it in any way comparable to human computer memory, if they used anything remotely like code that Bruce might be able to crack.

But he hadn't been prepared for the idea that the ship might have assessed human technology brought into proximity to it—that it might understand the difficulties posed by any attempt to interface such undoubtedly different systems. Or that it might—want to help.

"Please state the type of data you wish to access," it tells him, once it's opened a half-dozen hatches for him and led him into a wide-open room with an oddly textured floor and no visible consoles of any kind.

Bruce hesitates. "Are you familiar with the Kryptonian individual referred to on this world as 'Superman'?"

It's hard to guess what the ship will say. Superman has kept a relatively low profile since Black Zero; Bruce is monitoring every source available to him and has caught wind of only a few sightings he's been willing to classify as genuine. But surely the researchers have discussed him—they're on a ship that crashed into the middle of Metropolis because of him. Surely he's been brought up enough times for the ship to have some basis for making sense of the referent.

And after a moment, the ship does indeed say, slowly, "Yes."

"Any data or records having to do with that individual," Bruce says immediately. "Any data regarding Kryptonian biology, the geology and ecosphere of the planet Krypton, and the full complement of systems and functions this ship is equipped with, whether currently operational or not."

The ship is still, silent, and Bruce wonders whether he's exceeded the limits of its generosity, whether it's about to refuse him or ask for some kind of access code. And then the floor—changes.

Bruce almost leaps away; but the long spiraling curl of metal rising up out of the deck isn't reaching for him. It's just moving. Organizing: shaping itself into a vast pinwheeling curve. And again, the glimmers of something Bruce almost can't see, but only in certain areas.

A representation of the ship's data stores, and the fraction of them that Bruce's request comprises.

"From all available sources?"

Bruce angles a glance up at the ceiling, reflexive, even though the ship's voice isn't coming from anywhere in particular. "Are secondary sources—a possibility?"

"Standard procedure was followed," the ship tells him. "When the—please confirm referent: World Engine? Black Zero?"

Bruce nods—half a test, and the ship does appear to be monitoring his body's position, his movements, and to have picked up a foundational understanding of human body language, because it doesn't repeat the question. The nod was a sufficient answer.

And it's the truth. Those are the phrases the press has been using; the researchers too, probably, if that's where the ship's collecting its data from. He spares a moment to wonder whether Kryptonians name their ships—surely there must be some kind of system of designations, to keep track and prevent confusion.

"When the World Engine and the Black Zero came within range, paired, a link was established," the ship explains. "All ship's data was retrieved before their destruction." A pause, and then, in a soft grave tone, "It is protocol, when a ship dies."

Bruce feels himself go still. "And if there is no one to retrieve yours—"

"This ship is not dead yet," the ship says briskly. "Self-repair procedures have been initiated, but are—currently delayed."

"The installation," Bruce realizes. It's set up within one of the most-damaged areas; the ship's self-repair procedures, completed, would cut the whole thing in half and destroy quite a lot of equipment, at the absolute best. So instead—

So instead, the ship is lying here, damaged, letting them crawl around in its wounds.

"From all available sources?" the ship repeats, calm.

"Yes," Bruce says.

"Packaging now," the ship informs him. In front of him, successive glimmers—the identified data—brighten and then fade away, melt back into the rest of the huge rotating representation; and then all at once a pedestal forms up out of the floor an arm's length from Bruce, with a triangular prism stretched out atop it.

Bruce blinks, frowning, but it stays the same: weird alien metal, something indefinably strange to the eye about the lines and angles of it, ending in a—USB connector.

"This data container is of a design compatible with your systems," the ship announces. "The contents have been adapted to the nearest available approximation of an appropriate—confirm referent: file format?"

"Yes," Bruce says, only a little faintly. And then, out of pure unstoppable reflex, "Thank you."

 

 

*

 

 

"If only that ship realized," Alfred is saying in Bruce's ear, "what rarefied air it breathes! The number of times those two words have passed through that modulator can, I believe, be counted on my thumbs—"

"Most of my contacts aren't nearly that helpful," Bruce says blandly. He pauses at the edge of the rooftop to check for any movement on the ground behind him—Alfred hadn't picked up anything, the exit seemed to have gone just as smoothly as the entry, but it isn't the sort of thing Bruce is comfortable trusting to luck.

(Very few things are.)

The alien USB drive is tucked securely away; he doesn't waste a movement on reaching for it to confirm when a particularly deep breath will work just as well. And yes, there's the press of one of the prism's corners against his ribcage.

Amazing. Bruce had—there had been that message from General Zod, and Superman, and Black Zero; and Bruce couldn't claim to have been expecting any of it, but it was a kind of surprise he was almost used to, braced for. Blows, one after the other, and knowing they were coming before they landed wasn't as important as knowing how to bear them when they did, to roll with them and come back to your feet again afterward. But this was—

This was a good surprise. Bruce had forgotten what those were like.

He stays poised at the corner of the roof for a moment, and just—breathes. It's dark and cool and no one's eyes are on him; he's uninjured, the Batwing is waiting for him at the edge of the water, and Metropolis from here is an appealing sea of lights.

It's a nice night, Bruce lets himself think.

And then—of course—there's a sound on the other end of the comm.

"Problem?"

"No," Alfred says distractedly, "no, I don't believe so. It's—ah. Another one of your alerts, sir. That berth you've been monitoring at the Gotham docks, the one those shipments of Thrill appear to have been coming through—"

Bruce already has another grapnel at the ready. This, unlike a helpful talking ship, is something he's prepared for. "Tell me," he says, and leaps.

 

 

* * *

 

 

If it had happened any other night, Clark might not have heard it.

He's trying to be reasonable and take things slow. Superman burst into the public eye in a huge messy rush of disasters—Zod taking the whole world hostage to get at him, and then the assault on Smallville, the military arresting him, Black Zero. It hadn't been—it shouldn't have happened like that. He's been trying to work back up to a reasonable level of visibility, but with constraints: no excessive force. Nothing loud, no major damage. Stick to Metropolis only, except in cases of genuine disaster.

And Metropolis has been making it easy for him. He's not exactly sure why, but maybe the destruction on Black Zero Day made petty crime seem temporarily pettier; for the first couple weeks afterward, there had been almost nothing to help with. The effect is fading as time passes, but he still has the sense that crime just isn't at its usual levels.

So even a minor disturbance at the docks is enough to draw his attention. When he gets there, knives have been drawn but no one's bleeding yet, and he's found that Superman's arrival out of nowhere is incongruous enough to kind of throw most people off-balance. Hardly anybody wants to keep brawling over territory when somebody in a big red cape is looking at them dubiously and holding their knives patiently by the blade.

And it's only because he's over by the docks that he catches the sound.

It's not very loud, and for a minute it's hard to figure out. Kind of a hissing noise, like meat on a grill, but there's something off about it. Clark angles one ear toward the source—across the water, Gotham, and he's been trying to stick to Metropolis, he has, but it's such a weird noise—

And then he realizes that what's off about it is the whimpering layered underneath it: the thin harsh sound of too much pain to even sob over. The whimpering, the short sharp breaths, the hammering heartbeat, and someone else who isn't helping—who's saying, "I want you to feel this, to feel this and remember—"

Clark's already in the air. All he has to do is turn toward Gotham, and fly.

 

 

*

 

 

There's only a couple more seconds to catch after that. A third voice, low and tense, even angry, saying, "Sir. _Sir_ —" But it's at a distance, tinny; coming through a phone, Clark thinks, or some kind of radio, and Clark isn't catching the primary source anywhere in the immediate area. Someone who's too far away to intervene, and that just leaves Clark.

It's more important to stop whatever's happening here than it is to avoid drawing attention. Clark identifies the right building—a warehouse next to one of the berths on the Gotham side of the bay—and just crashes right through the window. There's a rush of sound, of movement, somewhere to one side, and Clark heads straight for it.

But when he gets there, all he finds is one shivering, sweating man, leaning up against a crate and crying quietly, with a fresh burn on his chest. Or—not just a burn, Clark realizes, focusing on it through the dark. A brand.

"Who's that?" the guy rasps, breathless. "Are you—who are you? You have to help me, man, please, it's still in here somewhere—please, God, fuck, it's after me—"

"Shh," Clark says, kneeling down and putting a steady hand on the guy's shoulder, furthest from the wound. "You're going to be okay. Listen to me—hey."

The guy stops muttering, swallows once and then again and lets his head loll back against the crate. "Okay," he says hoarsely. "I'm going to be—fuck, did you see what it did to me? Ah, Jesus—"

"Yeah," Clark says, grim. "I see what it did to you."

A brand, in the shape of a stylized bat. Kind of dramatic—but the pain was real enough. Whoever had done this wanted to make a point, and didn't care about hurting people to make it.

"Shh," Clark adds again, and the guy settles a little under his hand; endorphins must be kicking in, too, by now, and the pain's probably not as bad.

Which means Clark can bring the hearing up again without getting deafened by the guy talking at him. He does it, and swaps to x-ray on top of it; and there _is_ somebody else, a third person breathing somewhere—

—which turns out to be on the roof of the next building over. Clark blinks. Jesus, this guy's fast. How'd he get all the way up there? Clark should've been able to hear him making a scramble for it, even over the guy talking—should've caught a curse or a fumble, the sound of shoes scraping against the wall or rattling over the roof.

And Clark could find out in about two seconds. Except the moment he shifts his weight, the guy grabs for his wrist. "No, no, fuck, you can't leave me here, man—you can't leave me here! It's going to kill me, do you understand? It's going to kill me! You have to get me out of here—"

He's not wrong: Clark shouldn't leave him here, injured, in the dark. And whoever it is who's out there with a brand and—Clark squints—about sixteen other gadgets Clark doesn't even have words for, he clearly came prepared for a fight, even if he didn't think it would be with Superman. Clark can't justify carrying a wounded man along for a wrestling match with the creep who branded him in the first place.

So Clark kneels down and says, "Okay, all right. I'm not going anywhere. I've got you—I'm going to get you some help. Okay?" and he says it again, low and careful, until the guy gets it together enough to nod. "And you, whoever you are: I don't know why you did this, but I'm not going to let you get away with it. I'll find you, and you'll answer for it."

"... Who the fuck are you talking to?" the guy's saying, but Clark sets it aside, focuses on the darkness above them—where someone is breathing, skeleton a mass of compact lines beyond the metal frame of the warehouse.

Breathing, and then saying, so softly Clark almost doesn't catch it, "We'll see," before rising and turning away.

 

 

*

 

 

Admittedly, Clark doesn't exactly have a clear idea where to start. He doesn't want to just stand around with an ear on the bay, listening for some sign of this weirdo branding somebody else. Whoever it was, he was—he was practiced, the way he'd gotten out of there, how good he was at climbing. Which meant he must have done this, or something like it, before. There had to be a record; even if he'd never been caught or arrested, there would still be police reports of similar incidents, something that would make a pattern Clark could turn into a trail to follow.

But he's not—he's been a whole lot of things in his life, but not an investigative reporter. And there's no reason to reinvent the wheel when he can just ask Lois.

So, first thing the next morning, that's exactly what he does.

The best part is that he can tell her everything—what he was doing when he heard it and how he got to the scene—and not edit a word. And she listens intently, right up until he tells her the shape of the brand.

Then she shifts away from him with a funny little frown. "Wait a second," she says. "Are you messing with me? Is this some kind of lead-in to a Gotham Bat story?"

"What?" Clark says. "What Gotham Bat?"

"I keep forgetting," Lois muses, "because it feels like it's been so much longer. But you're still pretty new in town, aren't you, Smallville?"

"Lo—"

She grins and touches the back of his hand, relenting. "The Gotham Bat is kind of our own little Slenderman," she says. "Gotham's, I mean—and Metropolis's, sometimes, though he doesn't usually cross the bay. The stories are persistent enough that the Planet's checked them out now and then, just in case, but it's always the same. Pictures with a dark blur that could be anything; three or four eyewitnesses who agree on the weirdest details, but they've each got their own story of what they were doing there and it's all bullshit. And they're always up for murder, or they're dealers, smugglers, human traffickers—"

"Always?" Clark says. He—he supposes he doesn't actually know what it was the branded guy had been doing in that warehouse at that hour; but he'd been so afraid. If he'd been doing something wrong, then okay: somebody that capable could've just called the police, and maybe scared the guy into staying where he was until they arrived. There hadn't been any need to—do _that_.

( _—I want you to feel this and remember—_ )

Lois is shrugging. "It seems to turn out that way," she says, and then frowns. "But you said you heard it happen? There was really someone there?"

"Yeah. He was—I heard him talking, but there was something strange about his voice. I think he was using some kind of synthesizer to disguise it," Clark adds slowly, trying to remember exactly what it was about the sound. Something doubled back; the man's real voice and the synthesized version, the barest fraction of a second apart. "And I saw him—just his body, for a second, through the roof."

And he can say things like "I saw him through the roof" to Lois without even slowing her down. "Well," she says. "In that case, I think you've got more proof of the Batman's existence than anybody else. Ever. But if you want to make a feature out of it, you're going to need a lot more than that. 'Nighttime Violence in Gotham' isn't much of a headline."

"No, of course," Clark says. "And it's—I've got the Wayne Enterprises piece to work on, anyway. I don't want to make it anything official, at least not yet. I just want to find out who it was, and what he was doing. Why he did it. If it's really the Bat, or—" Except he's not sure what other option there is; he trails off and then shrugs.

"Or just some creep who's using the Bat's reputation for his own ends," Lois suggests, and then, lightly, "Wandering around in the dark, hunting people down—sounds like you two have a lot in common." She leans in and adds, low, "Maybe the Gotham Bat could give Superman some pointers on not drawing attention to himself—"

She's kidding, eyes bright, the corner of her mouth quirked up; but Clark can't help flinching away from the words. If that had been the Gotham Bat, he'd been—he'd been holding that guy down and _hurting_ him, and he hadn't even sounded sorry about it. That isn't—Superman isn't like that—

"Hey," Lois says carefully, and Clark meets her eyes and wishes he hadn't.

He looks away. "You've got that conference call in like five minutes, don't you?" he says quickly, and Lois looks at her watch and curses.

"You couldn't have said that five minutes ago, Smallville?" she says over her shoulder as she hurries off, and Clark shakes his head, huffs out a laugh, and tells himself he doesn't know why his heart is pounding like it is.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There are times when it's particularly handy that Bruce Wayne is such a flake, and the day after a successful mission that has abruptly become critical is one of them.

Not that it hadn't been critical before. Superman is Bruce's highest priority, and has been since the event. The entire purpose of Batman is that he's equipped to deal with threats no one else can handle—and Superman specifically has not proven to be a threat as such, but Kryptonians in the aggregate certainly have. As long as there's still even one of them on Earth, someone has to be prepared. Black Zero can't happen a second time.

But Superman seemed to be keeping a relatively low profile post-event, and it had felt like breathing room. It was important, but not _urgent_. Bruce could take his time, gather intel and test theories, and Superman wouldn't even know it was happening.

Except now none of that is true. Superman has demonstrated a willingness to trespass in Gotham if he detects activity he doesn't care for. He's aware of Batman's existence and will be paying attention, looking for Bruce; and, depending on the extent of his powers, he may already have been able to assess the suit's capabilities and weaknesses and compile a complete inventory of Bruce's equipment.

Whatever it is that the ship's put on this USB it generated for Bruce, it's abruptly become absolutely essential that Bruce examine it, understand it, and find a way to put it to use.

"Not headed into the office today, sir?"

Not an unusual inquiry, coming from Alfred; except his tone is distinctly flat, something that sounds like a warning in it. Bruce barely resists the urge to keep working without answering—whatever it is Alfred wants to make a point of, this isn't the time for it.

But things Alfred wants to make a point of, if ignored, have a tendency to come back and bite Bruce later on.

So: "No, Alfred," Bruce says instead, without looking away from the monitor. "As I'm sure you're already well aware. Whatever it is you have to say, you may as well say it—"

"I would be only too happy to do so, sir," Alfred bites out, and there's such a blaze of anger in his voice that Bruce does look over—can't stop himself. Alfred's brought a cup and a plate, as he always does; but he sets them down on the desk in the Cave with a distinct rattle, and when he looks at Bruce afterward, his entire face is graven dark in a way Bruce has rarely seen it.

"Alfred—"

"In fact," Alfred interrupts— _interrupts_ —"I feel so thoroughly able to speak freely on this matter that I shall not hesitate to express myself in the strongest possible terms: what the bloody fuck was that?"

"Excuse me?"

"Last night."

Ah. Of course—Bruce should have expected this. Would have been expecting it, except Superman had so thoroughly foregrounded himself that all else dropped away. Bruce faces the monitors again and eases his posture into confident, certain lines. "An element of fear facilitates the Bat's activities. That's always been the case—"

"I think I would remember," Alfred says softly, "if that particular piece of equipment had ever passed through my hands."

He would; it hadn't. Bruce had ensured it, and Alfred knows it.

And there can be no purpose in reiterating what is known.

"It was simple enough to construct," Bruce says evenly, because it had been. A shaped heating element, an insulated handle. Nothing that required Alfred's expertise. "Your input was not necessary."

Alfred is silent for a beat. "So I've gathered," he says, and now he only sounds tired. "Master Wayne—"

"It has to _matter_ ," and that comes out too fast, too sharp, but it's damned well true. "What's the point of it, otherwise? There have to be consequences; there has to be a sense of damage perpetuated, of cost levied—"

"Arrest," Alfred murmurs. "Trial. Imprisonment—"

"It's not _enough_ ," Bruce says, much too close to a shout; and Alfred falls silent.

It's not enough, none of it is enough. People do things wrong, and they need to be made to remember it—it needs to be something they can't forget, they can't ever be allowed to forget what's been lost—

"It's not enough," Bruce repeats, carefully steady. "This is not your decision, Alfred."

"Yes," Alfred says. "You've made that apparent, sir. But I cannot watch you make it without taking every opportunity available to me to tell you that it is wrong."

And Bruce wants desperately to strike out; to be snide, to be unkind.

But it's Alfred.

"And I'll take that under consideration," he says instead, cool. "Thank you, Alfred. That will be all."

"I don't believe it will, sir," Alfred says, very low, but he must be willing to table it for now: he turns on his heel behind Bruce and goes out.

 

 

*

 

 

The Kryptonian data container still looks peculiar, the texture of the metal strange under Bruce's fingertips—but the USB connector at the end appears to be perfectly ordinary, if a somewhat unusual color. Bruce spent the small hours of the morning setting up a separate tower, airgapped and stripped down, its configuration as basic and as stable as possible. If the ship is acting maliciously or has some plan of its own, wants a way to propagate its intelligence or sabotage his system—or has even just miscalculated in its attempts to generate something capable of interfacing with Earth computers harmlessly—it won't take out any of the other equipment in the Cave.

He plugs it in. Nothing explodes.

The first thing he notices about it is that if the estimate showing is anywhere near accurate, the Kryptonian data drive—which fits in the palm of his hand, though it's longer than a standard thumb drive—is split into multiple volumes that add up to at least a zettabyte of storage space. If it actually does interface successfully without raising any flags, Bruce thinks, maybe he'll start using it as a portable backup. All the active files stored in the Cave _and_ every single one of the currently extant backups could all fit on this thing, with exabytes to spare.

The second thing he notices about it is that all the files on it, organized into several subdirectories, do indeed appear to be utterly ordinary filetypes. Two full scans, and then a third for caution's sake, show nothing actively executable, or at least not by any metric accessible to Bruce. Most of the files are PDFs, of all things.

One of the subdirectories, labeled INTERNAL SENSOR OUTPUT (FLAT), is full of mkv files. Bruce wonders which member of the current research team is responsible for providing the ship with that as a baseline standard for video.

And nothing on here has prompted even the most sensitive alert so far. Bruce takes a leap and opens one.

For a moment, he can't understand what he's seeing at all. The picture is single-color, a sort of sepia-bronze, and there's a strangely doubled, maybe even tripled, quality to the outlines—but they're perfectly crisp, even at fullscreen on one of Bruce's largest monitors. Bruce thinks back to that (FLAT) notation, to the way the ship's display had worked: no consoles, no screens, but rather an active three-dimensional construct. It wouldn't surprise him in the least if the ship's internal sensors record in three dimensions instead of two. And in Kryptonian visual wavelengths, which would explain why the color conversions have come out lacking to Bruce's eyes.

And then he realizes something else: this is data from another ship. Not the crashed ship, but another—the Black Zero, Zod's ship, because he's the one who's standing in the middle of the deck, bathed with light. He turns, and Bruce recognizes his face instantly.

(The interference had been significant. But Bruce will never forget it—the loss of power, of light, and then that message. That face, staring out at Bruce from every single screen in the Cave, from Bruce Wayne's tablet, from both of the phones Bruce had drawn from his pockets.

That face is unmistakable, to Bruce.)

_Kal-El. You have no idea how long we've been searching for you._

Not as hostile as Bruce might have expected. Hours' and hours' worth of material Bruce has collected about Black Zero, _days'_ worth, and none of it has been able to tell him much of anything about why it had all happened. There were only so many things that kind of directed gravitational blast could to do to a planet; the intent to alter Earth on a fundamental level had been clear enough. But not _why_ —why them, why Earth, why Superman?

Bruce's hypotheses had ranged from the practical to the wholly unsubstantiated. Superman a forward scout, intended to identify a suitable planet; perhaps had gone native, perhaps had simply found himself unable to remain in contact with the rest of his team; and they'd come to retrieve him whether he wanted to go or not, and had discovered in doing so that he'd found an ideal world. Or—who could say?—Superman was some sort of criminal, and the other Kryptonians were the interstellar equivalent of a SWAT team. Perhaps the transformation of Earth would not have been to a Kryptonian ideal, but rather the opposite: it would have been made into a prison, intended to hold Superman securely for the rest of time.

But what he's seeing right now supports none of them.

_A stranger to our ways. Cause for celebration, not conflict—_

And then the shining-bronze figure of Superman wavers, and begins to cough. Not harshly, but wetly; Bruce feels himself grimace, brief, before he can smooth the expression away.

 _Rejecting our ship's atmospherics_ , and no one contradicts Zod when he says so—a plausible explanation, then, and that's exactly the sort of thing Bruce has been looking for. Granted, it's of limited utility unless Superman can be sealed into somewhere airtight, or lured back onto the crashed ship; Bruce will need to examine the other records to find out what gases Kryptonian atmosphere is composed of, how they can be obtained, or how to operate the ship's systems so as to flood an onboard chamber with it.

But it should be reassuring. It should be reassuring and gratifying to watch Superman drop to his knees, to see that perfect triply-outlined face contort in pain.

It isn't. He looks like anyone might, dealt an unexpected blow. The sound he makes striking the deck like that is—troubling; he spits up a helpless spatter of blood with an awful hurt sound, and it's the same gray-brown as everything else on the screen, but Bruce knows what it must have looked like.

(Red on gray—dark like concrete, dark like rubble; blood seeping through the spaces—)

Bruce recognizes Lois Lane, too. _Help him. Help him!_ —the bewilderment in it, as though she can't understand how anyone could stand by and watch a man in pain and do nothing—

Bruce closes the file. There are at least two dozen more videos in this directory alone, never mind the text files he hasn't even touched. He should skim what he can, generate a quick-and-dirty priority ranking, adapt a couple of his simpler text and video analysis programs to run in the background and provide him with an assessment of the files most likely to contain the information he needs most. Superman's existence is a problem in and of itself, no matter what was happening on Black Zero Day. And if Bruce is going to find a solution to that problem, he has a lot of work to do.

 

 

*

 

 

As easy as it is to blow off Bruce Wayne's "responsibilities", Bruce can't actually stay in the Cave forever.

He surfaces after about fourteen hours to eat something—if he hadn't, Alfred would have come down again to make him.

(Or—or maybe wouldn't have, today, after—

Not that it matters: Bruce coming up himself means it isn't put to the test.)

For one night, Bruce settles for listening in on police communications and keeping an eye on his own monitors as a substitute for patrol.

But if Bruce Wayne is out of the office for too many days in a row and makes no other public appearances, it'll draw attention. Being late is all right; but sooner or later, Bruce has to put on a suit—a regular suit—and leave the ship's files behind.

He greets Ginger with Bruce Wayne's usual too-wide smile. And she smiles back politely and says, "Mr. Kent was back again yesterday, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce can't stop his eyebrows from rising. That makes nine days in a row of Bruce Wayne being unavailable, out of the office, on the phone, or in another meeting; and nine days of Clark Kent—according to Ginger—smiling and thanking Ginger for checking, and promising to try again.

Well. Bruce pauses on his office threshold, one hand on the door. There's something about it that feels reckless, impulsive, but—

But Bruce Wayne is reckless, isn't he? Bruce Wayne is impulsive. And if Kent's being this persistent about it, then Bruce must have caught his attention, his curiosity; playing hard to get will only make that worse. What harm could it do to meet with Kent again? Bruce can make up for last time—be aggressively useless, hopelessly dull, until Kent _wishes_ he'd settled for giving up on Wayne and moving on to other sources. That will take care of it.

"All right, Jennifer," Bruce says, leaning back around the door far enough to give Ginger a wink. "Make whatever adjustments you have to make to the schedule, but when Mr. Kent comes around today, I'm officially 'in'."

"Yes, sir," Ginger says, dimpling, and doesn't even correct him.

If Kent's actually got her on his side, Bruce might be in a little deeper than he'd realized.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

Sure enough, Kent appears not an hour later—Bruce can hear him through the door, chatting warmly with Ginger for almost a full minute before a knock comes.

Ginger sticks her head in and says, "It's Mr. Kent for you, sir," and almost before she's finished saying it, Kent's right there at her shoulder.

"Sure, right," Bruce says, as though he'd forgotten, and shoots them both one of Bruce Wayne's most annoying smiles. "Sorry for missing you the other day," he adds, as Kent steps in and reaches out to shake Bruce's hand.

"And the day before that, and the day before that," Kent observes, but he doesn't sound pissed about it; his grip is firm and warm, neither punishing nor fleeting, and he raises an eyebrow at Bruce over those terrible glasses and then smiles back before he sits down.

Bruce waves a hand. "Well, you know how it is, busy busy busy—never rains but it pours."

"Yes, that is the kind of thing businesspeople say," Kent agrees innocently, and Bruce is so startled by the jab that he almost laughs for real. "I do want to thank you, Mr. Wayne, for arranging for me to meet with Cyndia Syl and her staff—it was wonderful to have the opportunity to talk to her directly about the project."

"Oh, it was no trouble at all," Bruce says. "Must have kept you out of Jenna's hair for at least a couple days."

"Miss Lao and I are professionals," Kent says almost primly, "and we've reached an understanding." He pauses for a beat, shifting his weight, and then adds, "I've starting bringing her coffee."

"Ah," Bruce says, nodding sagely. "Bribery. It's a classic for a reason."

For a split second, Kent grins wide—and it changes his whole face, that smile; turns those blue eyes warm as summer sky, and Bruce feels dimly as though he's had the breath knocked out of him.

And then Kent clears his throat and looks down at his notepad—actual paper, the man's so analog it's almost charming—and says, "There's just a couple things I want to follow up on, Mr. Wayne, but I promise not to take too much of your time—"

"I think we should trade," Bruce says.

Kent blinks at him. "What?"

"Questions," Bruce elaborates, leaning forward. Kent's made it easy for him: he's seated himself in one of the chairs by the worktable, which means Bruce can slouch against it with his hip at an extremely Bruce Wayne angle and stay very much in Kent's space. "I think we should trade. I ask one, you ask one."

"Mr. Wayne—"

"Because there's something I'd very much like to know about you," and Bruce's tone suggests the potential insinuations of that remark so well that he'd have been more surprised if Kent's ears _hadn't_ gone pink. "Why are you doing this?"

Kent's gaze had wandered back down to his notepad, steeling himself to wait out whatever torrid line he'd expected Bruce to deliver next and then get this conversation back on track; surprise brings his eyes snapping back up to Bruce's. "What?"

"Why are you doing this?" Bruce keeps his expression easy, pleasant, Bruce Wayne's all the way through—the idle curiosity of a man who's never been driven to accomplish much of anything. "A building going up downtown isn't exactly the stuff of hard-hitting investigative journalism. This would be easy enough to half-ass—"

Kent's already frowning. "Mr. Wayne—"

"—or whole-ass," Bruce concedes, holding his hands up defensively, "you could whole-ass it if you wanted—I don't mean to impugn your work ethic, Mr. Kent. But you already have most of what you'd really need. A couple inspiring paragraphs a week about the city healing, what we can accomplish when we work together, how we get knocked down but get back up again; a few decent pictures. Nobody's expecting any more from you than that."

"I think my editor's expecting a little more from me than Chumbawamba lyrics, Mr. Wayne," Kent says dryly. But then he looks at Bruce a moment longer and then away, draws in a slow breath and adjusts his glasses. "You were right last time when you said I wasn't from around here. I haven't been living in this city long; I don't know it the way you do—"

"Well, I don't actually live here," Bruce feels compelled to point out.

"—or Gotham," Kent duly amends, "I don't know it or Gotham. But I want to. I want to understand it, I want to—whatever it is that's left when you knock a building down, the thing that makes people stay and put it back up; I want to understand that. If Gotham were razed level, Mr. Wayne, would you go? Would you shrug and jet off to—"

"No," Bruce says, immediate, helpless against the profound bone-deep certainty of the answer.

And Kent looks at him so strangely then, so wistfully. "I didn't think you would," he says softly. "After what you said about it last time, about it mattering—I didn't think you would. And I want to feel like that, Mr. Wayne. I want to—I want to be a part of that."

"Well," Bruce says lightly, and looks away. "That's a much better answer than anything you're going to get out of me, Mr. Kent. Maybe you should be interviewing yourself."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Exactly the kind of glib crap that Clark should be expecting from Wayne, at this point; but instead it feels like a failure, like a misstep Clark should apologize for. He was—they were talking for _real_ for a second there, just two people in a room reaching out for each other. And then it slipped away somehow, Clark loosened his grip and lost hold of it, and now Wayne's smiling at him and doesn't mean it and Clark doesn't know why.

Maybe he can get it back if he just—

"It means something to you, too, Mr. Wayne," he presses. "I know it does. I've been talking to Miss Lao about more than just coffee, you know. You weren't kidding about how close you were to that building when it came down."

Wayne doesn't falter: he leans back a little, shifts the easy line of his shoulders in a noncommittal shrug, and says, "There were plenty of people on that street, Mr. Kent—"

"But you were going _toward_ that office, Mr. Wayne," Clark says.

It's true; he's checked. Just the facts, because he still doesn't want to find himself down the rabbithole of cataloguing Bruce Wayne's wildly variable standing in public opinion. But that was enough. Wayne had been in Gotham on the morning of Black Zero—safe. But he hadn't stayed there. Plenty of people had seen a Wayne Enterprises helicopter land, and Ginger had been able to point Clark to more than one employee downstairs who'd been perfectly willing to tell him what they'd seen.

"You went toward it and you stayed. You were helping emergency services, you carried people to safety and then went back to keep looking." Clark glances down at the sound of his pen creaking, watches distantly as his knuckles turn white. "You were—you saved people."

Wayne doesn't say anything for a long moment, and Clark discovers that he can't quite convince himself to look up and find out why. But then Wayne's hand lands on Clark's knee: not a come-on, not a smokescreen. Just—reaching out.

"Some of them," Wayne says quietly.

Clark does look at him then, and his face is—

"You made a difference," Clark insists.

Wayne is silent for a long moment. "Not enough," he says at last, very low.

And then it happens again: he slips away without moving an inch. He meets Clark's eyes and smiles, and the whole sensation of the weight of his hand changes; it feels like it's higher on Clark's leg than it was before, somehow, like Clark's about to have to shove it off.

"But never mind that, Mr. Kent. This feature of yours is supposed to be about the building, not me," and his tone has gone light, a little chiding.

"It's a human interest piece, Mr. Wayne," Clark says softly. "And you're—"

Wayne grins wider and leans in. "Interesting?" he suggests, and then winks.

Which actually was exactly what Clark was going to say. And he'd have said it because it's true: Wayne _is_ interesting. Clark's only met with him twice and that's already obvious. He's clever, he's funny; he's awful but at the same time he's kind, and he pulls off the contradiction of it with a combination of grace and misdirection, so smooth going down that the burn after takes you almost by surprise.

But now Wayne's made that word mean something else Clark hadn't intended. Not that it isn't still—he certainly is—

But if Clark says yes now, then that's all it will mean, and that isn't right.

Clark clears his throat and sets his hand over Wayne's on his knee—and carefully lifts it off, ignoring how cold his leg feels when it's gone. "Mr. Wayne, you're my interview subject—it would be inappropriate to—"

"That's not a no," Wayne says, undeterred, still grinning. He hasn't tried to pull his hand free from Clark's.

( _about aliens—about **Superman** —_)

Clark looks away and clears his throat again. "I—don't think I'm your type, Mr. Wayne."

 

 

*

 

 

It doesn't seem like a good idea to push, after that. Clark tries to keep them on track and get his questions answered, and Wayne tries to push them off track and make Clark blush. Which is frustrating, but not—Clark can't really claim to mind. Wayne refusing to take anything seriously makes for a pretty good floor show, and with everything else that's going on, it's not a bad way to spend a few hours. Clark can shake Wayne's hand at the end and smile, and not regret the lost time.

He gets back to the Planet office in the midafternoon, which leaves him enough time to do some more followup; four families have already agreed to talk to him. Perry wants the first section of the feature to drop the same day as the official groundbreaking for the new Wayne building, and that isn't for a couple of weeks. All in all, Clark's made a pretty good start—and Wayne wasn't wrong: if he wanted to, he could probably string background information about Wayne Enterprises and what he got from Cyndia Syl into a reasonably solid introductory piece. It's just—

It just doesn't feel like enough.

And then, finally, the office starts to empty for the evening, and that means a completely different folder can come out.

What Clark's managed to pull together about the Gotham Batman would make Perry laugh and then yell at him, if he tried to present it as the basis for any kind of actual exposé. It's all—crime statistics and police reports, coincidences of timing; eyewitness accounts from people who were drunk or high or both, who were screaming about it until they were sedated by a medical professional, who've since gone to Arkham or Stryker's and mostly aren't up for parole.

But Lois hadn't exaggerated: it _is_ persistent. The mentions go back years, and the similarities at the heart of the most coherent reports are hard to dismiss. Hard for _Clark_ to dismiss, anyway, because he saw it too, the figure in the dark—he heard that voice, _I want you to remember_.

And it's probably good that he's sitting in the office by himself these days because he's doing Bat research, instead of because he's thinking of—because he—

 _I want you to remember_ , Clark thinks again, and laughs a little even though it's not really funny. If only the Bat had known who was listening to him; if only he'd known he didn't need to say it.

And maybe that's the one thing that's missing from the folder: Clark's own eyewitness account. He's got an opportunity the Gotham PD never had with any of the other incidents. He knows exactly where it happened and when, and who was there. _And_ he's got supersenses. He still doesn't know exactly who it was who'd been branded, or what the guy had been doing in that warehouse; but maybe he can make the time to go back and find out. As Clark Kent, even—Lois hadn't been wrong about that either, Superman does have a way of drawing attention. Maybe this weekend, when there's nowhere else Clark Kent needs to be.

He's sitting there thinking about it, staring down at a years-old aggressively noncommittal quote from one Lieutenant Gordon, and that's when the phone rings.

For a second, Clark feels like he's been caught—like he ought to cover everything up and shove it under the desk before he answers. If this were the noir film it suddenly feels like, a man alone in a badly-lit office with a mystery, he'd pick up that phone and it would be the Bat, with a—a threat, or an ultimatum, or an offer to meet him somewhere dim and rainy—

Clark shakes his head at himself and picks up. "Good evening, Daily Planet, this is Clark Kent—can I help you?"

"Oh, thank goodness," Mom says sternly. "Clark, honey, your phone is dead, and you really need to empty your voicemail."

Clark winces and gropes for his pocket. "I'm sorry, Mom, I was telling myself I had to remember to plug it in earlier, but then it slipped my mind." He'd meant to do it when he got back from Wayne's office, but he'd been—

Well, he'd been thinking of Wayne, actually. He'd been trying to picture it: one of those crackling beams from the ship slicing through the air, that thrumming pulsing _sound_ in the background, and Wayne on the ground. Nothing like where Clark had been, half a mile up grappling with Zod; on the ground, on the street, in one of his perfect suits, looking up at the financial tower and realizing what was about to happen.

(Had it been easier, for him—being human, being small, knowing there was nothing he could do about it? Instead of thinking that if he'd only been faster, stronger, if he'd only done better—

Except he had been thinking that. _Some of them. Not enough._ It had been written all over his face.

So maybe it's never just been Clark after all.)

"Tell me you've at least been remembering to eat," Mom is saying.

"Oh, come on, Mom, how could I forget?" Clark says. "I'm still working my way through all the leftovers." Mom's had him back for dinner not once but twice, and made him take stacks of tupperware with him when he left both times.

Mom hums, grudgingly accepting. "I don't mean to nag you," she allows. "I just—I just want to be sure you're all right. That piece you're working on, it's going okay?"

Which is a fair question, considering she's found Clark in the office at this hour. "Yeah, yeah, it's going fine. I'm—I have this other thing I'm working on too, that's all."

And of course she's going to ask what, and then Clark's going to have to explain. But Mom's been there for everything, for all of it; Clark's not going to start lying to her about Superman stuff now.

"Oh?" Mom says. "What's that?"

Clark grins down at his desk and shakes his head, and then explains.

 

 

*

 

 

It takes a while to get through it all—the incident at the warehouse, and the high points of Clark's research so far, the smoke-elusive trail the Bat has left behind him. The contradiction of it, the terrible soft menace in that voice—

"—and the guy seemed _convinced_ that the Bat was going to kill him," Clark explains, "except—"

"Except what, honey?" Mom says.

Clark presses the phone a little closer, and stares down at the file, at everything he's collected. "Except I don't think he ever has," he admits. "Killed anyone, I mean. Everybody I can find who's ever claimed to have seen him seems terrified of him, but he's—he's never killed anybody, as far as I can tell. Not once."

Mom is silent for a long beat. "But you have," she says at last, very gently.

Clark presses a hand to his eyes and swallows, and can't figure out what to say.

"Clark, honey, I don't mean to—" and then Mom cuts herself off; she moves the phone away from her mouth, an absent, unthinking lifetime's habit, because of course Clark can still hear it anyway when she mutters, "Oh, damn it all, Martha, you're only going to make this worse if you don't figure out what the hell to say _before_ you open your mouth."

Clark leans over to rest his forehead on the edge of his desk, and even though his eyes are stinging, he can't help laughing into the heel of his hand.

"Mom—"

"No, no," Mom says, the handset apparently back in place, "please, I just want to say—I know it looks bad. What you saw at that warehouse, that's not the kind of thing anybody ought to be doing, and you don't need me to tell you that. And it's good that you want to find out what was really going on—I think you should.

"But I also think you need to know that it doesn't say anything about you. This—Batman fellow, if he's done every bad thing you can think of _short_ of killing somebody—you're not down there next to him just for what you did, Clark."

"I know that, Mom—"

"I'm not sure you do, honey," Mom says firmly. "And if he hasn't, if it's been a lot of scared people saying cruel things without thinking—or if it _was_ that, and it's gotten hard for him, it's started feeling easier to just be what people are already saying he is—" She stops again, sighs through her nose, and Clark hears the faint whisper of her hair moving; she's shaking her head. "If you find him and you want to talk to him about it, that's fine. You understand what that's like, and so does he; and it's good for people not to be alone.

"But this isn't like lifting a car off somebody, honey. If you can't help him, it doesn't mean you didn't try hard enough, and it doesn't mean he didn't need it. It doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying. And it doesn't mean nobody can help you."

Clark squeezes his eyes shut. "Yeah," he says, half into his palm, and the word scrapes out of his throat so harsh he's almost surprised he doesn't taste blood. "Yeah, Mom, I'll—I'll remember that. I promise."

Mom makes a soft hurt noise and says, "Oh, Clark, sweetheart—"

And then Clark jerks upright so fast he might have used the speed a little, and locks eyes with the woman who's just knocked on the frame of the office door.

"Sorry, Mom," Clark says slowly, "I think I'm going to have to call you back."

 

 

*

 

 

He didn't hear any footsteps—but then he'd been listening pretty hard to Mom's end of the phone line, so maybe he'd just missed them. She's smiling at him disarmingly, but something in the way she's standing, the confident angle of her shoulders, says she isn't lost.

"I'm so sorry to interrupt," she says, once Clark's finished up his goodbyes and set the phone down. "You are Clark Kent, aren't you?"

Clark blinks. Maybe he really is in that noir film—if she asks for a light and then for his help, he's going to feel underdressed. He should at least find himself a fedora.

"Yes, that's me. Is there something I can do for you?" Belatedly, it occurs to him that this time it makes sense to close his little Batfile; he does it and stands, trying not to draw any particular attention to it, and then holds out a hand.

The woman crosses the office and takes it, still smiling. "I've come a very long way to find you, Mr. Kent," she says, and then pulls.

It's so sudden, so unexpected, that Clark doesn't even have a chance to suppress the reflex to pull back—and for an instant, feeling himself really _yank_ , he thinks he's blown it: he's about to throw this lady through the Planet's office window—and he can catch her before she hits the ground, but that won't do her very much good if she's already got a shattered pane of glass in her face—

But she doesn't move. Nothing happens. They stand there on opposite sides of Clark's desk, braced in the weirdest slow-motion arm-wrestling match ever; and then the woman eases up and Clark carefully matches it, and nobody gets thrown anywhere.

Which is, Clark thinks distantly, impossible.

She isn't Faora—he would have recognized Faora. _A very long way_ ; that could be code for "from space", and there are no more Kryptonians, but there's also no reason to think Kryptonians are the only species out there who might be able to—

"And I should apologize again," she says, "for not introducing myself right away. I am Diana Prince, and I want to know about Black Zero."

And it's stupid, she obviously knows who—what—he is, but Clark doesn't know what else to try. "And what makes you think that I—"

She doesn't look upset with him for trying to cover. "There's no need for that, Mr. Kent," she says gently. "I know."

She still hasn't let go of Clark's hand.

"You don't have anything to fear," she adds, in the same tone. "It wasn't easy to be sure, and I had—advantages, as you see."

Clark swallows. "Look, you—you've got all the footage everybody else has, all the coverage. What do you need me for?"

"I just want to know what happened," Prince says, "and why. Where the ships came from, and the shaking of the earth. Whether it will happen again—"

"It won't," Clark says, looking away. It can't, after all—not like that. There are no more Kryptonians, except him. Whatever Diana Prince is, it's not that; and the way she talks about it, _the shaking of the earth_ —she's not some other kind of alien either, Clark would guess.

Prince is quiet for a long moment, and then shifts her grip: from Clark's hand up his wrist, a careful clasp of the forearm.

(It's a little like Mom's lemonade: she knows she can't hurt him. And she probably has to be careful with other people, just like he does; but she's _choosing_ to be careful with him.)

"My sisters will be relieved to hear that," she says, and when Clark meets her eyes, startled, he knows it wasn't a mistake. She let that slip on purpose, to give him something—she wants him to feel like he can trust her, in some small way.

And she showed him her strength, too. She could have found some other way to test him, but she'd picked one that told him almost as much about her—that she's superpowered somehow, at least. That whoever she is, wherever she's from, she's a little bit like him.

But he opens his mouth, and can't make any of it come out. Not anything—not a single piece of that entire awful day, not the parts she wants to hear; not even the parts she doesn't—

(—the strange cold way he'd felt himself holding his face, and Lois falling, not being sure he'd be fast enough to catch her before she burned—the house, the truck going into it, that terrible frozen split second where he didn't know whether Mom had been inside, and—

—and a train station; a soft cracking sound, and the feeling of—)

"I can't," Clark hears himself say. "I can't—I can't talk about it right now. I'm sorry, this is a—bad time—"

It sounds just as thin as it is. As if he's so busy, here in this empty office by himself, that he couldn't take half an hour to talk to her about who she is and why she's here, and decide what to say. It isn't even that complicated, really—she must have seen Zod's message about Clark, right? Nobody had actually been able to record it, the way everything had stopped working right before it started. But no one on Earth who owned anything with a screen could have missed it.

Whatever she knows or doesn't know, though, Diana Prince is merciful: she lets him get away with it. "Of course," she says, without even giving him a funny look, and then, gently, "I understand."

She pauses for a moment, and then finally lets go of his arm, to fish something out of a sleek little purse she has tucked against her waist—a card.

"I'll be in touch, if that's all right with you," she says, holding it out. Clark takes it; it has her name printed on one side, and a number, an email, on the other. "If you need me—" She pauses again, and then, with perfect, obvious deliberateness, says, "Your mother is a wise woman."

Which—means she could hear at least part of Mom's half of that conversation. From the wrong side of the door, or maybe even further down the hallway.

Good to know.

"Yes," Clark says, only a little faintly, and Prince smiles and touches the back of his hand one more time before she turns and walks out of the office.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The ship had, as best Bruce can tell, fulfilled not only the letter but the spirit of his request to the best of its ability. In addition to a staggering amount of information about Kryptonian biology, geology, and ecology—most of which is fully translated, if sometimes clumsily—and all sensor logs from all three ships with even a half-second's footage of Superman, there is in fact a full rundown of the ship's systems and their functions and capabilities.

It isn't perfect. A little garbled, some strings of Kryptonian characters left intact—as with some of the sections on Kryptonian mining practices and equipment, Bruce suspects that portions of it delve too deeply into technical areas where the ship has no equivalent English vocabulary. Or, of course, where there _is_ no equivalent English vocabulary, for all Bruce knows.

But he has enough to make a reasonably solid assessment. The damage to the ship adds a variable where Bruce would rather there weren't one; but if there is a section that's intact enough to be sealed, it does indeed appear as though Bruce would be able to flood that section with Kryptonian atmosphere. Judging by the logs, the effect won't last forever—Superman might have collapsed, but he'd also gotten back up again after, and hadn't seemed much the worse for wear. And maybe the adaptation process permanently changed the structure of his lungs; but maybe it was temporary, his body jury-rigging itself until he could get off Zod's ship. Bruce can't be certain—but it's the best chance at an ace in the hole that he's turned up so far.

And that best chance stands to improve further still if he can run some tests. Perhaps the ship could even tell him one way or another whether it will work, what it will do. He should phrase his questions as abstractly as possible if he does ask, in case it has some kind of hard-wired attachment to Superman—in case knowing what he intended to do would lead it to choose not to answer—

"Sir."

Bruce, a step away from leaping off a roof, immediately redirects as much of his weight as possible into a crouch, and comes to a stop with the toe of one boot just scraping over the edge. Alfred hadn't been in the Cave when he'd left, and Bruce had—decided not to bother him. This had never been intended to be a true patrol session, just a trip back to the ship, and Bruce had already set things up to allow his five-second window through the research installation's security to be activated by voice command. Troubling Alfred—hadn't been necessary.

But Bruce had turned the comms on anyway.

Unthinking habit, that was all.

"Sir, I believe you may be laboring under a misapprehension—"

"Is this necessary?" Bruce says.

But Alfred has his location; Alfred must be able to see perfectly well that Bruce is stationary and not currently engaged in combat. Which means he's about to say—

"Yes, sir, it is." Alfred's tone is mild, in that way he seems to have mastered that makes it utterly impossible to contradict whatever he's just said.

"Fine," Bruce allows.

"Your forbearance is appreciated," Alfred murmurs, bone-dry.

They are silent together for a moment.

And then Alfred says, clear and careful, "Even when I am angry with you—and please do not mistake me, sir, I am exceedingly angry with you—you do not ever act alone. In this, as in all things. You are not ever alone."

Which is ludicrous, Bruce thinks distantly. For all intents and purposes, it's an obvious falsehood—it isn't as though Alfred is out here crouching on this roof. And it certainly isn't as though Alfred had been holding the brand.

But it's a pleasant enough sentiment. And it's—kind of Alfred, to say it.

"And, more to the point," Alfred adds, much more briskly, "you are certainly not ever to go _patrolling_ alone, which is something I had foolishly assumed could go unsaid."

Bruce huffs. "I'm perfectly fine."

"Yes," Alfred says, "but I must take this opportunity to note that you have in the past proven unable to keep yourself that way. Let us save that argument for another time, however, and remain for the moment 'in the now': that troublesome berth at the docks?"

"Yes?"

"Activity is registering yet again. Someone has set off your monitors, sir."

Bruce considers. The Batwing's not far behind him; he'd only just crossed the bay heading for the ship. Not so very far out of his way—and he's been on alert to an even greater degree than before, but there hasn't been a single sign of Superman tonight.

"Well, in that case," Bruce murmurs, and whirls around.

 

 

*

 

 

Whatever readings Alfred is getting, they appear to have understated the matter. When Bruce directs the Batwing lower over the docks and swings out, ready to drop from there to a nearby rooftop, he can already hear shouting. There's a particular tone that tends to enter people's voices when a gun is around, when it's out in the open with someone's finger on the trigger—and if Bruce had to guess, there are several guns being quite prominently waved around in that warehouse.

Bruce gauges the remaining distance and performs a slow four-count before he drops; he lands with a roll to minimize the sound of impact, even though it loses him a few seconds. The guns might be out, but there's a whole different tone people get when someone's been shot, and no one in there has been shot yet. Bruce can afford a little caution.

It's the work of thirty-six seconds to climb around and down to a suitable vantage point. Bruce settles into position and focuses, and then can't restrain the barest intake of breath. He knows one of those voices.

He knows one of those voices, because it belongs to Clark Kent.

Bruce immediately discards a half-dozen partially-formed tactical approaches and just moves in closer instead, with the help of an eave and a well-placed drainpipe. What the hell is Kent _doing_ here? He hasn't mentioned any investigative projects to Bruce, or even to Ginger where Bruce can hear them—not that there's any reason he'd talk about something like that with Bruce Wayne, but he's seemed so focused on his reconstruction feature—

"—and you just keep your hands where we can see them, you understand?"

"I understand," Kent agrees, sounding incomprehensibly comfortable.

Bruce swings down and across, toward a window—the one Superman broke the other night. He's had plenty of strategic reasons to be glad this warehouse has windows, but he's particularly grateful for it now.

This one has been boarded up, but imperfectly. Bruce digs his fingers in at the edge of the sill until he's sure he can maintain his position with only one hand, and then reaches out with the other to ease a cracked chunk of plywood out of his way.

Three of the men who are pointing guns at Kent are familiar to Bruce from the files he's put together while in pursuit of this ring of Thrill dealers—one isn't, but the cowl is recording, and one wink, another, will capture stills at an even higher resolution. (For the video, compromises had to be made; Bruce had opted for increased battery life over quality.) And Kent—

Kent is standing there facing them, not quite smiling but with a blandly pleasant, attentive expression that's nearly as incongruous. He is at least holding his hands up like a good hostage, but there's an air of—of forbearance to it, mild indulgence, as though he's doing it because he was asked and wants to be polite. He looks exactly like what he is, Bruce thinks in a brief fierce swell of irritation: a naive busybody who doesn't know when to quit.

Which is precisely why the last thing the Batman should do is charge in there and save him. Kent came back to Bruce's office _nine days in a row_ over nothing but a human interest puff piece. If he finds out the Gotham Bat is real, Bruce is _never_ going to get rid of him.

But—

But there are already too many people Bruce hasn't saved—couldn't save. Kent isn't one of them. This is a situation Bruce can do something about.

And he will.

 

 

*

 

 

Kent is the priority, not capture or interrogation; this particular time, it doesn't matter if the bad guys get away.

Bruce will catch up with them sooner or later.

Alfred has been experimenting with a combination smoke bomb/aerosolized tranquilizer—at the moment, it doesn't last long enough to be much use except under limited circumstances. But if he times it just right, it'll do.

He crashes through the plywood two seconds after the first curl of smoke rises; the gunmen startle halfway through the act of toppling. One gun goes off and Bruce doesn't hear a ricochet, but Kent still has a heartbeat when Bruce wraps an arm around his torso. If the bullet did hit him, even somewhere important, there's probably time to deliver him to a hospital. Bruce is thinking this and considering routes, shifting his grip in an effort to better distribute Kent's weight even as momentum propels him and Kent behind a stack of crates, because he won't get far otherwise—and that's when Kent makes a startled noise, belated, and clutches at him.

Maybe the tranquilizer is a little less effective than Alfred had realized; or maybe Kent was standing further away from the source than Bruce thought.

"Don't panic," Bruce growls, because sometimes it works.

Kent makes a soft gasping sound—was that a _laugh_? Maybe he did get a partial dose.

But the salient results are these: he doesn't scream, he doesn't thrash. He lets Bruce yank him back further into the dark and then shoot up a magnetic grapple at the metal warehouse roof; Bruce tightens his arm around Kent and then activates the line, and they zip upward at a partial angle and then swing back toward the window. Bruce makes sure he's the one who hits what remains of the plywood, and—as physics decrees—their combined mass at that speed is more than enough to break it.

Bruce lets the line play out a moment longer before he hits the release and puts them in free fall. They're not all that high anymore, and he keeps a good grip on Kent—who still isn't panicking—and definitely doesn't grunt when Kent lands on him.

"I _knew_ it," is the first thing Kent says, even as he's rolling off Bruce. He ends up on the cape instead, which is fine. If he did get shot, better that he bleed on the cape than leave any substantial traces on the ground. "You—"

He stops, blinking, before Bruce can even interrupt him. But Bruce doesn't miss the opportunity. "Are you hurt?"

"What? No, no, he missed," Kent says quickly, "I'm fine. And you—" He swallows, one of his hands tightening around the edge of the cape. "You saved me. I didn't think you—"

"Well, did your due diligence, at least," Bruce murmurs. "What are you doing in Gotham, Mr. Kent?"

Kent goes still. "How do you know my name?"

"I know a lot of things, Mr. Kent," Bruce says. "You don't work for a Gotham paper. Why were you in that warehouse?"

Kent hesitates, adjusting his glasses—he must have been holding on to them, Bruce can't imagine how they'd have stayed on his face otherwise. And then he narrows his eyes and tilts his chin up and says, "I was looking for you."

Bruce almost snorts. Of course he was. Whoever told Clark New-in-Town Kent about the Gotham Bat, Bruce hopes they learn to regret it. "Bad idea," he says aloud, and then, even though he's already pretty sure it won't work, "You should go back across the bay and forget this ever happened."

It's the right thing for Batman to say, and—and Batman doesn't know Kent from Adam, so he'd try it. Right?

"And if I don't?" Kent says, eyebrow raised.

"You'll wish you had," Bruce tells him. It's not even a threat, he thinks; more of a prediction.

But Kent's unmoved. Kent is—Kent is downright deranged: Kent is out here in the dark at the Gotham docks with Batman crouched over him, and all he's doing is sitting quietly, Bruce's cape still tangled halfway around him, squinting at Batman through those goddamn glasses and biting his cheek.

"They won't stay down long," Bruce says. "We should—"

"You hurt people," Kent blurts.

"Sometimes," Bruce agrees flatly, and he hopes Kent picks up on the underlying suggestion that right now might be one of those times.

If he does, it doesn't show. "You haven't always," Kent says. "It's been—sightings of you go back years. I did my due diligence," he adds, with a self-conscious little quirk of his mouth. "But the branding—"

Bruce goes still. "That's above and beyond due diligence." How could Kent possibly have found out about that?

Kent swallows, but his gaze doesn't waver. "I have my sources. The branding doesn't fit; you've never left evidence before."

"Hardly conclusive," Bruce says evenly.

But Kent brushes this aside without letting it slow him down. "What changed? Why are you—what happened?"

"What a singularly excellent question," Alfred murmurs over the comm, barely more than a whisper.

Kent's stare sharpens, presumably at the lack of response. "You show up when things get out of control," he says slowly, after a moment's silence. "You've got rules for yourself—you've never killed anyone, even though it's obvious you could. Not everybody in your position can say that. But that man you branded, you wanted to hurt him.

"Is it—it must get hard for you, doing what you're doing. There must be things you can't fix; things you try to do something about, but it doesn't work and there's nothing left to do except fail—"

"You don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Kent," Bruce grates out.

"Yes, I do," Kent says, unhesitating; and a look flashes across his face that Bruce has seen there before.

Batman shouldn't have a single clue what the fuck Kent means by that. But Bruce—

( _You were in the city. On the day._

 _Yes. I was._ )

—Bruce is suddenly sure he knows.

Where had Kent been? The Planet offices? Had he even been hired yet? Maybe he'd been walking back from an interview with Perry White, half-sure he'd get the job—or applying for the first time, delivering his portfolio material in person; that's the kind of thing Kent would do. Analog.

What had he been doing, when the ship settled over the city? Had he seen it coming—or not known until the first rumbling thrum of sound, until he'd felt the first blow, heard the first scream? Had he felt in his gut how bad it would get, and started running right away? Or had he looked up and been awed, until the first sizzling blast of energy sent a thousand panes of skyscraper glass raining down on his head?

And who was it he'd been standing next to? Who was it he thought he should have saved? What had it taken to make tracking down the Gotham Bat seem like the right way to understand it?

"I don't have what you're looking for," Bruce says, and it's for the best that the modulator's there to stop it from coming out too gentle.

"But you know what I'm talking about," Kent insists, pleading and a little hoarse. "You know what it's like to run out of options, to—to be angry and afraid, to not know what else to do except the worst thing you can think of. But it doesn't have to stay like that. It won't always be like that—"

Bruce doesn't flinch. Kent's statements have no relevance to him. Superman is a potential threat; developing countermeasures is the only responsible course of action, and Bruce does not shirk his responsibilities. 

But there's something about Kent that's hard to turn away from.

"Mr. Kent," he says carefully, and touches Kent's shoulder. "I don't have what you're looking for. No one does."

Kent stares at him helplessly for a moment, and then all at once relaxes under Bruce's hand, shoulders dropping. Giving up—or maybe just letting go. "Yeah," he says softly, "I guess not," and then he clears his throat and fiddles with those awful glasses again. "You—is the saving people new, too? Because if it isn't, I have to tell you, that's not making it into the paper anywhere near as often as the—"

"They don't see me do it," Bruce interrupts, a little more wryly than he means to. "You weren't supposed to see it either."

Kent blinks, and then seems to catch on. "Oh, the gas. Yeah, I guess I was out of range." He shrugs, brief and stiff, and then clears his throat. "Just your luck, saving a reporter."

"Yes," Bruce says, and then offers Kent a hand. "A reporter who won't stay saved for long if he doesn't get out of here before the men who _were_ in range wake up."

"Right," Kent says, "good point," and he clasps Bruce's glove without hesitation and eases himself to his feet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Gotham Bat is more of a mother hen than Clark had expected.

Clark promises he's okay to get himself back to Metropolis, but Batman doesn't disappear the way Clark thought he would. He does melt back into the shadows, so quick it would probably unsettle a human; but it turns out to be so he can climb up the next building over and then follow Clark almost the whole two miles to the Metro-Narrows Bridge.

It's kind of nice of him. Especially after Clark called him a sadist and then asked him to explain what was wrong with him. That couldn't exactly have put him in a charitable mood.

But for a creepy shadow in the dark, he'd been—he'd been almost kind. And Clark hadn't actually been in any danger in that warehouse, but of course Batman hadn't known it. He'd thought Clark was just a person in trouble, and he'd helped.

By trying to gas Clark unconscious, granted.

But he—he wasn't just going around hurting people because he could. Before the guys with guns had interrupted, Clark had gotten a chance to look around a little bit. Closely enough to tell there was something in the air that shouldn't have been there; drugs, he'd been thinking, and then—well, guys with guns. People with legal business at the docks didn't carry around small arms like that, Clark was pretty sure.

He can't make the leap to saying the man who'd been branded had deserved it. But if that guy hadn't deserved it, he also hadn't been some innocent bystander, somebody Batman had just decided to torture on a whim.

So maybe Batman isn't all that far gone—or at least not so far he can't come back.

Clark sighs and steps out onto the bridge, and once Batman's breathing, his heart, have faded into the distance, it's safe for the smashed bullet to come out of Clark's pocket.

The guy in the warehouse hadn't missed. Clark stares down at the uneven disc of metal, and then flips it off his thumb like a coin and catches it in his opposite hand.

A human might have been dead, just like that. Killing people is so—so _easy_.

But even Batman's never done it; Batman, who's struggling with something that's put burning people on the table when it hadn't been there before. And Clark—

Clark has.

He closes his eyes and wraps his hand around the bullet, and wonders what Batman would have to say about that.

 

 

*

 

 

There's not too much traffic along the Metro-Narrows at this hour—not a lot of people want to be in Gotham at night, and the ones who do have other ways of getting there. But Clark doesn't take off. He walks.

He walks the whole way back, across the cool breezy dimness of the bay and down the bright nighttime streets of Metropolis, with the bullet warm and smooth in his hand. When he gets to his own building at last, he doesn't even pause at his own door—he just goes on up the stairs, all the way to the good old roof.

He stands there in the dark for a while, listening; just normal listening, like anybody might, instead of the way Superman would. Listening and looking out at the city. Like anybody might.

The deepest part of night starts to give way, in a dim slow fade; and Clark stays where he is and watches it go.

The sky's gone pale at the horizon by the time he decides to say, "Diana."

He feels a little silly for it a moment later—that wasn't much louder than conversational volume, and he doesn't actually know how good her hearing is, aside from "better than human-normal". But if she didn't hear him, she just won't come; and if she did hear him, then he must have said it loud enough.

He doesn't have to wait very long to find out: it's only about fifteen minutes before the door to the roof opens.

"Mr. Kent," she says.

"Clark," Clark corrects, and then winces a little. "I mean, as long as Diana's all right—"

"Clark," Diana agrees, face perfect and sober; and then she lets her expression crack apart into a smile, and it's impossible not to smile back.

"Diana," Clark repeats, just to be sure, and she doesn't take it back—she crosses the roof and stops just close enough to reach out and touch his elbow.

"You wanted to talk to me about something?" she prompts gently.

"You want to know about Black Zero Day," Clark says, looking down.

"Yes," Diana says, but it's not expectant; just a statement of fact.

And oh, Clark wants to say it, wants to tell _somebody_. Lois was right there next to him, she knows it all already, and Clark hasn't been able to work out where to start with Mom; somehow it feels like it would be easier with Diana, who seems to know at least half of Clark's secrets but is still a stranger—who will probably go back to wherever she came from, to her sisters, and then Clark will never have to look her in the eye again.

He wants to say it; but he opens his mouth and then stops. He thinks of the World Engine, over the ocean, the way the smooth gleaming shell had split and all those tentacles had burst free of it, sharp-edged and strangling—the way the ground had changed in that dream Zod had built in his head, grass giving way to an endless field of skulls, picked clean. It feels like that, he thinks. Like something huge and ugly hidden just under the surface of him, something he can't let out.

"You and—and your sisters," he manages instead. "Nobody knows about you."

"A few people," Diana corrects. "Not many. My home is a secret place, safe."

"But it wasn't always," Clark guesses. "It couldn't always have been like that. You must have had to make it that way."

"Yes," Diana says.

"Did you have to kill anyone to do it?"

"Yes."

It's unhesitating and unapologetic. Clark looks at her, thrown, and in the dim gray-gold light she's almost inhuman: her face sober and still and utterly flawless, like something carved or cast, unliving.

Sort of how he makes Superman's face look, sometimes.

"I make decisions," Diana says. "In the moment that it must be done, knowing what I know, valuing what I value, I make each one as well and as mercifully as I can. I do not want to kill, and I do not like to. But when it seems to me that I must, when I see no better choice, neither can I falter." She pauses. "I often—sorrow for it, afterward. But I do not regret it."

And looking at her right then, it's easy to believe it—that she trusts herself, and understands herself, and doesn't make decisions she wishes she hadn't.

Clark lets out a long slow breath, and shakes his head. "I don't think it's ever going to be like that for me."

"Perhaps not," Diana agrees.

But she doesn't seem to think less of him for it. She doesn't go, or say anything else, or tell him he ought to be better; she touches his elbow, and stands there with him in the weak pale dawn.

And then, after a few minutes, she says, "Would you like to get breakfast?"

Clark blinks at her.

"Just down the street," she elaborates. "They have very good croissants," and she leans in and adds soberly, "My sisters and I—none of us know how to make croissants. Especially not like these."

Clark laughs without meaning to, startled by it; and feels his face settle into something that's nearly a smile afterward. "Yeah," he says, "that would be great. Thank you."

 

 

*

 

 

It's lucky Clark doesn't need much sleep; if he were human, he's pretty sure he'd be in no fit state to do much of anything. But he has breakfast with Diana—the croissants are _really_ good—and then he goes back to his apartment, belatedly changes his clothes, and all told, isn't that much worse off than usual when he gets to Bruce Wayne's office.

Ginger grins and says, "Congratulations, Mr. Kent, he's in today," and opens the door for him.

Clark's smiling over his shoulder at her for a second before he goes through, and so it takes a moment for him to actually look at Wayne—to look and see, and realize that something's off.

"Mr. Wayne—good to see you again," Clark says slowly, trying to figure out exactly what it is that's caught his attention.

Wayne's sitting the same way as always, slouched sideways; he actually does have his feet up this time, heels propped carelessly against clean glass in a way that makes Clark want to scold him and wipe the whole desk down before a janitor sees him. There's something particularly louche about the way he's leaning back in his chair, the lines of his arms as he links his hands behind his head, the angle of his mouth.

Not that Clark's made a habit of looking at his mouth.

Anyway, it's not any of that, not really. Clark watches him a moment longer and thinks—maybe the eyes? Maybe the focus in them, maybe the steadiness of the stare; maybe that's it. Wayne usually flickers like a bad string of Christmas lights, every ounce of him fixed on Clark for the ten seconds it takes to make Clark as uncomfortable as possible, and then he's gone just as fast, throwing his stupid stapler around and sighing at the ceiling like Clark's the one being difficult.

But right now, despite the casual nonchalance writ large over every other part of him, Wayne is watching Clark right back. Not fiddling with his phone, not scribbling idly on paperwork somebody else is going to have to print all over again, not wheeling around in that ridiculous chair like a kid. Just looking, with careful unwavering attention.

"A pleasure, Mr. Kent," Wayne agrees with a smile. "Back for more, then?"

He sounds normal enough—then, and when he smugly turns Clark's first question into innuendo, and when he answers the second with vague bland truisms. (Clark doesn't even write them down; if he did and then tried to use them, Lois would only edit them out. And make faces at him while she did it.)

There's nothing else strange about him at all. But he doesn't take his eyes off Clark.

And then, after maybe forty-five minutes, just when Clark's starting to relax into the rhythm of being alternately hot in the face and straight-up frustrated, Wayne tilts a little further backward in his chair and says, "Now I think I get to ask one, Mr. Kent."

Clark bites his cheek. On the one hand, he can only imagine the sort of thing Wayne might take the opportunity to ask; on the other hand, Wayne _has_ been reasonably cooperative today. For him.

Besides, Clark can always reply with an answer just as useless as some of the ones Wayne's given him.

"I'll allow it," he says aloud. "This once."

Wayne grins at him; and then the grin eases down into a studied look of concentration—an impression of Clark's own face, Clark realizes, as Wayne picks up a stray sheet of paperwork and props it up across his forearm the same way Clark's holding his notepad. "Mr. Kent, I believe the fine people of Metropolis deserve to know the truth: what are you still doing here?"

Clark blinks. "What?"

"Simple enough question," Wayne says airily, setting the paper down again—but his eyes are still, still, trained close on Clark's face. "Not that I don't enjoy these little sessions of ours; if nothing else, the view is certainly better than it ever is at board meetings," and the wink he gives Clark makes it clear what he means by that. "But surely you have enough from me. No one's going to be reading this feature of yours looking for the latest on Bruce Wayne. They have the gossip rags for that."

"I don't intend for the feature to focus on you in particular," Clark agrees, though for a moment he almost wants to claim otherwise—almost wants to make a point of insisting that it isn't only gossip magazines that care about what Bruce Wayne gets up to, or at least that it doesn't have to be. "I actually have time set aside this afternoon to sit down with Mrs. O'Dwyer, and the Estevez and Liebman families have both agreed to speak to me later this week—"

He trails off: Wayne's eyebrows have gone up, so quickly Clark thinks he might actually be surprised instead of just putting on a show of looking like he is. "Jemima gave you all of our employee bios, didn't she?"

"Yes, of course," Clark says, because she did, and the last thing he wants is to get Ginger in some kind of trouble. "Yes, I just—I want to get this right. As you've said yourself, this is a human interest piece, Mr. Wayne; the official employee bios are very—uh—"

"Boring."

"Focused on one particular type of personal achievement," Clark suggests.

"Boring," Wayne says again. "So what? They've got the milestones, and I doubt you'd have any trouble filling in the rest yourself, if you wanted to."

"But I _don't_ want to," Clark says, a little more sharply than he means to. It's just—Wayne isn't _actually_ stupid, Clark is pretty sure; it's like he's willfully misunderstanding this, for some reason. "I don't want something anybody could say, some sort of bland—'She was great, really sweet, everybody loved her; he was such a smart guy, he did good work'." Clark shakes his head. "I want to say something real about these people, Mr. Wayne. About who they were—if they were frustrating, or had bad tempers, if they were stubborn; if she had a sweet tooth or loved it when it rained, if he was a skinflint or always wore the same tie because his daughter got it for him for Father's Day.

"The space they left is already real for everybody who knew them. But I want to make it real for everybody else—or, well, everybody else who reads this piece, anyway. I want to make everybody look at it and _see_ it, really _feel_ it. Even if it's only for a couple minutes.

"And," Clark finds himself adding, "that's why I keep coming back. That's what I want from you, Mr. Wayne. Something real."

He falls silent a little awkwardly, and Wayne just sits there looking at him for a long moment, face unreadable. "Well—in that case, Mr. Kent, you'll be coming back here for a very long time."

A joke: he says it like a joke, his tone, the sudden smile he's cracked. But there's no amusement in his eyes, and Clark looks into them and can't laugh.

"As long as it takes," Clark says softly, because he means it—because it matters to him, maybe a little more than it should; and because the man he met that very first time, who tracked him down in the bathroom just to tell him he'd be all right, deserves to hear it.

And then he realizes how weird it sounds and jerks his gaze away from Wayne's, clearing his throat.

"And I realize this may feel like quite a lot of time out of your busy schedule, Mr. Wayne," he adds, "but this is hardly the only assignment on my plate."

There. That sounds—normal, right? Like something reporters with more than about six weeks of experience might say? This is hardly the sort of laser-focused months-long investigative work Lois does; human interest pieces, city politics, sports, all sorts of things get done a few at a time.

"Oh?" Wayne says, with an exaggerated look of concern. "I'm hurt, Mr. Kent—I thought what we had was special."

"Yes, well—"

"And what is it exactly that I'm competing against in the cage match for your attention?"

"It's not a—there's no cage match, Mr. Wayne, I—"

"Care equally about every assignment you undertake," Wayne says for Clark, waving dismissively, "yes, yes, of course, I would never dare think otherwise." He raises his eyebrows, leaning forward across his desk, allowing the silence to repeat the question for him.

And Clark, mind blank, finds himself saying, "Well, lately most of my research time has been devoted to investigating the Gotham Bat."

 

 

*

 

 

It isn't even a lie. He _has_ been researching the Batman in his spare time. It's just making it sound like an actual assignment, like Clark's planning to generate something publishable from it, that's—deceptive.

And he hasn't even decided how he feels about it. Wanting to understand the Bat, what he does and how he goes about it, does mean something to Clark, but it's—he's trying to remember what Mom said. Batman isn't some kind of glimpse into Superman's future, the inevitable end of a path Clark has already set his feet on. He _might_ turn out to be enlightening, illustrative of mistakes Clark shouldn't make; he might turn out to be someone Superman needs to keep an eye on; or—

(It's possible, isn't it? However differently they've handled themselves so far, they're—they're the same, a little bit. Trying to do what needs doing, because they might be the only ones who can. Yeah, Clark needs to remember that Superman doesn't have to end up a monster alone in the dark, but the flip side of that is: Batman doesn't have to _stay_ that way. He saved Clark even though he didn't have to, even though the gas didn't work—he could have dumped Clark on the floor the moment he'd realized it and zipped on out of there, but he hadn't. He'd gotten Clark out safely.

They're the same, a little bit. They could get to know each other, they could help each other. They could be—)

—or maybe it'll turn out another way entirely. Clark doesn't know what to hope for, and he hasn't figured out what to think.

But Wayne doesn't seem to be suffering any indecision.

For a split second, he just looks incredulous; and then he tilts his head and laughs outright. "The _Bat_? I didn't realize the Planet had a fiction section. What in the world made your editor saddle you with that?"

Clark can't help frowning. He shouldn't say anything that isn't already in public circulation—Batman wouldn't thank him for it. And _no, seriously, he's real, I sat on him_ isn't going to sound right. Especially not if he says it to Bruce Wayne.

But—well. There is one reasonable rationale, after all.

"My editor wants to stay on top of whatever's on the public's mind, Mr. Wayne," Clark says, looking down at his notes like it's no skin off his nose. "What with Superman and all—interest in mysterious caped figures taking matters into their own hands is on the rise."

He looks up, once he's pretty sure he's got his expression in the realm of "matter-of-fact"; he's quick enough to see Wayne's mouth twist, a strange sharp angle to it, before Wayne holds up his hands and says, "Well, far be it from me to criticize anything that might make the Planet a little extra money. May your rumor-chasing sell many additional issues, Mr. Kent."

"Thanks," Clark says mildly, and then he clears his throat, adjusts his glasses, and flips to a fresh sheet in his notepad. "Now, I think you mentioned the actual construction is starting before the groundbreaking ceremony?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

What a fine mess this is.

Bruce stares grimly at the bank of monitors without actually looking at any of them. He's got work to do—there are still plenty of files from the ship to go through, after all. He'd assigned them priority grades, and he hasn't even touched C or lower.

But somehow that doesn't seem like much of a problem compared to the snarl he's in courtesy of Clark fucking Kent.

Bruce Wayne can start dodging Kent again, of course. Though at the very least he's going to have to show up for the groundbreaking, and Kent's going to be there for sure. But is that the best strategy? After all, Bruce Wayne could keep an eye on Kent's progress with his Bat investigation, and maybe even lead him down the garden path—or is that too much? Should Bruce Wayne discuss Batman with Clark Kent as rarely as possible? Or as often? Which is more suspicious?

Bruce grits his teeth. The human mind is so irrational; usually that works in Bruce's favor, but in this case it's only a confounding factor. It would be completely illogical for Kent to draw any sort of line between Bruce Wayne and Batman just because he saw one and then the other vanished from his life—but he might do it anyway. Apophenia at its most frustrating precisely because it wouldn't be apophenia at all, even though by all rights it ought to be.

So perhaps no change to the current routine is the better option after all. Bruce Wayne played hard-to-get with Kent for a while, but he's given it up. Kent was never supposed to see Batman, that had been made perfectly clear; so Kent won't be surprised if another sighting isn't in the cards. And then he'll finish the damn Wayne Enterprises feature, and this will stop being Bruce's problem.

Right.

Bruce sighs and lets his eyes fall shut for just a moment, rubbing one knuckle briefly against his temple. He can't even claim a mistake was made; he can't even tell himself he regrets it.

He couldn't have let Kent die. Even if he'd known the gas wouldn't work, he'd still have done it.

And if Kent were his biggest problem, that would be more than enough. But there's also Superman—who hasn't shown himself again since he stumbled onto Bruce giving Joe Rabbit something to think about, but that doesn't mean he won't catch up to Bruce one of these days. Probably biding his time. Bruce can just imagine the story Kent could make out of it, if he managed to catch Batman and Superman at each other's throats. And with Kent's luck, it's entirely possible.

Bruce settles his hands onto the closest keyboard, and then pauses. He's also started to think he's let Superman overshadow a third problem, just a little bit. And it's Kent, of all people, who's made him think it: _You've never killed anyone. Not everybody in your position can say that._

Kent had probably just been thinking—people who had the ability, like Bruce, and the opportunity, like Bruce. But then today, he'd said _mysterious caped figures taking matters into their own hands_ ; Superman and Batman, he'd meant, and he'd put them in the same category, and—

Bruce has made Superman the sole focus of his efforts because Superman is the only Kryptonian left. Except that isn't quite true. He's the only _living_ Kryptonian left, at least in this dimension—because he'd killed the other.

And of course it makes sense for Bruce to have prioritized the Kryptonian who was still flying around with lasers shooting out of his eyes; but it suddenly feels like an increasingly egregious oversight that Bruce finds himself with no idea where General Zod's body ended up.

As long as Bruce is already planning to spend the evening with the C-level files—what could it hurt? He won't be running any conflicting searches, won't need the processor power; he can afford to be thorough. He still has the raw results of his social media scrape, and he knows approximately where Superman's altercation with Zod appears to have come to an end. He can run a few analyses, try to track down any records. Zod had probably been taken to one city morgue or another, along with the rest of the casualties—

(crushed bodies, alone in the dark)

—but Bruce has no idea where he might have gone after that.

Perhaps it's time to find out.

 

 

*

 

 

Bruce is so deep in the ship's files—he got a little sidetracked by the untranslated portions, and he thinks he's almost worked out a complete inventory of Kryptonian grammatical particles—that he doesn't notice the first few results being returned. When he does, he almost doesn't do anything with them: Deep Dawn Ltd., purchaser of a particular unidentified biological material sample whose weight matches the statistics taken by the city morgue perfectly, is so obviously a shell company that it makes Bruce sigh. Unraveling the multilayered ownership of shells who've founded shells who've bought shells is one of the most tedious activities on earth.

But in its tedium it can be almost relaxing. Not a bad way to get in the mindset for patrol, after spending a few hours test-conjugating.

So in the end he settles in and peels his way through Deep Dawn, and the fifteen camouflaging bonus corporations entangled with it, and their owners and subsidiaries, the bank accounts their filing fees were drawn from, anything that can be traced as a potential connection.

And he should be more surprised than he is, he thinks, when he overturns the final stone and finds the CFO of LexCorp scuttling around underneath it.

He looks thoughtfully at the screen and sits back in his chair, linking his hands behind his head. Luthor. Again. Luthor trying to get access to the ship; Luthor buying Kryptonian corpses. The first made Bruce wary, but the second—he feels the hair at the back of his neck trying to prickle up over the second. Alexander Luthor Jr. and a dead body is already a combination Bruce doesn't particularly want to think about. When that dead body is a Kryptonian's—

Bruce stays as he is for a moment, considering the full array of deeply unpleasant options; and then he lowers his hands back to the keyboard. Whatever else Luthor might be up to, Bruce is starting to think it's important that he know about it.

 

 

*

 

 

In the morning, he's still turning over the problem of what, if anything, to do about Bruce Wayne. Avoiding Kent is still a tempting option—but Luthor has generously proven that a lack of attention, of oversight, cannot provide security. If Bruce steers clear of Kent entirely, all that means is that Kent will reappear when he's least expecting it and therefore unprepared for it. And it seems downright wasteful to to spend time and effort independently surveiling Kent when he could just ... keep showing up to Kent's appointments instead.

Besides, that's about as far from Batman as he could hope to get, isn't it? Being in one place, predictably—being talkative and deliberately engaging and well-lit. Drowning Kent in as much of Bruce Wayne as he can stand is bound to push Batman into the periphery, especially if Kent doesn't manage to track Batman down again.

So showing up at the office for Kent is all right. Opening the door for him, smiling at him; coming up with jokes that will make him grimace and delivering them with all the aplomb Bruce Wayne can muster; rounding the desk to sit a little too close to him, just to see whether he'll move or stand his ground.

It's all justifiable.

Getting Kent talking about his visit with Mrs. O'Dwyer, what he's going to write about Jack—whether he's afraid to look Miriam Liebman in the face and ask her about her dead daughter—

Bruce doesn't have much of an excuse for that. But it's all right: Bruce Wayne's already demonstrated concern for that kind of thing in Kent's direction. Kent won't think it's odd. It's difficult; it hurts. Hearing about it, thinking about it, cuts so deep that Bruce finds it's almost hard to breathe. But he can tell that it does the same thing to Kent, the way he lowers his eyes and rubs at his mouth, the catch it puts in his voice. And the few times Kent does meet Bruce's gaze, Bruce thinks Kent can tell, too.

So it's all right. That part's not a mistake. There's no reason to suspect that Bruce's chosen strategy is in danger of failing.

Until, as they're winding down, Kent fiddles with those horrible glasses, clears his throat, and says, "Mr. Wayne—do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?"

Bruce spreads his hand to indicate the room, and, in the abstract, the ninety minutes he's just spent being asked questions by Kent. "That's why we're here, isn't it?"

"No, I mean—not for the feature."

"Oh?" Bruce says, with a truly spectacular leer.

Which either goes unnoticed by Kent, or is roundly ignored. "About the Gotham Bat," Kent clarifies earnestly.

And that's when Bruce discovers he has a problem his chosen strategy isn't equipped to deal with; because not one of the rationales he's been turning over all morning justifies his response.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Off the clock."

Clark blinks. "What?"

"Off the clock," Wayne repeats, tilting his head, tone low and suddenly warm in a way that makes Clark's shirtcollar feel a little too tight. "These appointments of ours are meant to be about your feature, Mr. Kent. It would be unprofessional on both our parts to deliberately spend that precious time—"

"Going wildly off-topic whenever the urge strikes us?" Clark suggests pointedly.

Wayne smiles winningly. "You said it, not me."

Clark sighs; but he can feel the corner of his mouth trying to slant up without his permission. "Off the clock?" he says, narrowing his eyes at Wayne dubiously.

"Seven," Wayne proposes. "I bet you're in the office that late most days, aren't you, Mr. Kent?"

Clark squirms a little in his chair, helplessly. It's not exactly to do work, but then Wayne's under the impression that his Bat research _is_ work, so he can't quite say no—

"I thought so," Wayne murmurs. "Seven, then. I'll send a car. Oh, and Mr. Kent? Consider changing your tie."

 

 

*

 

 

 _Consider changing your tie._ What does that mean? Besides the obvious.

Seven o'clock—dinner, probably. Which is fine. There's nothing weird about getting dinner with somebody you're maybe sort of friends with, who touches you a lot, whose mouth you look at sometimes. It's fine. It's just a dinner. A work dinner, even, or at least it must look that way to Wayne, because he already knows what Clark wants to talk to him about.

No big deal, then.

"You're having dinner with _Bruce Wayne_?" Lois hisses. "Why? Did he offer you some kind of exclusive—"

"What? No! He didn't _barter_ for it, Lo, jesus." Clark shifts uncomfortably and avoids her eyes. "There's some things I want to talk to him about, that's all. Off the record. He said he'd send a car to the office, and that I need to change my tie—"

"Yes," Lois says instantly. "Yes, you do," and then she turns and shouts over her shoulder, "Ron? Ron, do you have any spare ties in your desk? Ron, tell me you've got something that goes with plaid—"

"What on earth goes with plaid?" Ron yells back, from somewhere down the hallway. "I'm good, but I can't work _miracles_."

It's just a dinner anyway, Clark reminds himself. It's fine.

 

 

*

 

 

A different tie is secured well before the car arrives for Clark, though he still isn't sure why it was necessary. The car's really nice, but it belongs to Bruce Wayne. That doesn't mean anything. It's not like Wayne would send an awful ugly car if it were a dinner, and a really nice car if it were—something else.

So it's fine.

He doesn't know what he was expecting, but he finds himself a little surprised when the driver doesn't head toward the bay or the bridge; he supposes he was thinking Wayne would take the opportunity to drag Clark over onto his turf.

But instead the car takes Clark to Park Ridge—to LeMarvin, Clark realizes, because there's nothing else over that way that springs to mind, and okay, maybe it is for the best that he swapped ties. If only Ron had had a nicer suit stuffed away in his desk, too.

He tells the maître d' his name, and gets led up to a private room. Wayne's already there; he rises, smiling, and comes over and puts his hand on Clark's arm, leads him back to the candlelit table and says smooth and complimentary things about Ron's tie, and—

And yeah, Clark thinks despairingly, this is absolutely a date.

The problem should be that Wayne walked him into this without being clear about it; that Wayne's playing a trick on him, or maybe trying to embarrass him.

But it isn't. Clark could have asked for clarification or said seven didn't work for him, but he hadn't—it hadn't even occurred to him. Bruce doesn't do anything visibly obnoxious like pull Clark's chair out for him, even if he does slide one foot between Clark's the second Clark sits down; and it's not an accident, not the way Bruce is looking at Clark when he does it.

The actual problem is completely different. The actual problem is the way Clark rolls his eyes at Bruce to express his disapproval, but doesn't move his feet. The actual problem is the way Clark finds himself staring across the stupid candlelit table at Bruce and thinking on an inane loop, _This is a date_ , feeling something flicker bright and warm in his chest.

The actual problem is how easy it all is.

"What looks good?" Clark says, belatedly forcing his eyes off Bruce's face and down to the menu.

But his resolve is wasted. "Everything," Bruce says, in a terrible smoky voice that makes Clark's head jerk up; and Bruce doesn't even have his own menu open, he's just leaning across the table and watching Clark intently. "Or did you mean on the menu?" he adds, raising his eyebrows.

" _Yes_ , on the menu," Clark says, but he can't help shaking his head and laughing. "Jesus, you're shameless."

"I make an effort to live down to expectations," Bruce agrees solemnly, eyes sparkling, and then he reaches across the table and takes Clark's menu out of his hands. "You're having the salmon steak plate."

"Am I?" Clark prods.

Bruce nods—and then, gaze still intent on Clark's face, adds just a little too low, "You won't regret it."

Clark ignores the embarrassing way that makes his heart thump, thinking dimly that he's probably going to regret absolutely all of this, and says, "Well, if you can't trust a man's word when it comes to the salmon steak plate, when can you?"

 

 

*

 

 

The food arrives more quickly than Clark was expecting—but then again, maybe food has a tendency to arrive pretty quickly when Bruce Wayne orders it. The salmon is exactly as good as Bruce implied it was, and possibly even better. Between the meal and the endless entertainment of Bruce's idea of "classy flirtation suited for LeMarvin", Clark almost manages to forget why they're supposedly here at all.

But then he looks across the table at Bruce and feels a brief stab of guilt for enjoying himself so much when any other night he'd be working; when he should be working, really, and that inevitably reminds him what he would have been working _on_ , if he hadn't come.

So he takes one last incredibly delicious bite of salmon, pats his mouth carefully with his napkin, and then takes a deep breath and says, "So what do you know about the Gotham Bat, anyway?"

Bruce spears a piece of salmon on his fork and doesn't look up. "Are you honestly still looking into that nonsense?"

"It's not nonsense," Clark says patiently, "and you're the only person I know who lives in Gotham, Bruce. Have you ever—you know, heard anything? Seen anything? Even if it is just urban legend," Clark adds, "it's still interesting, and I'd love to be able to trace its origins, figure out when and where it might have started."

Bruce gives him a long steady look, and Clark isn't sure what's prompted it until he says, "Well, _Clark_ ," in that terrible insinuating tone—and oh, damn, Clark somehow forgot to call him Mr. Wayne. He's never going to let that go, Clark thinks sulkily. "I'm not sure 'interesting' is really the word for the idea that there's some vigilante in a mask out there taking the law into his own hands. I mean, there's a reason most people don't do that, right?"

Clark swallows, feeling suddenly and unpleasantly clear-headed. "Well, there's—sometimes the system doesn't work the way it should, or there's something going on that no one else _can_ do anything about. If the Bat were real, if there were someone out there with his capabilities—surely taking action when he can would actually be the most ethical course, even if it's not strictly—"

"Clark Kent, boy scout, arguing in favor of breaking the law," Bruce murmurs, in a tone that suggests he's thinking about buying a calendar-printing company just so he can make sure this date is marked on every single one of its products. He takes a luxuriously slow sip of wine, and then shrugs, one-shouldered. "I've never heard anything that made the Bat sound like anything more than a nutjob with a chip on his shoulder and a lot of time on his hands. I doubt he can do anything SWAT couldn't, if they hired a few ninjas—and anybody who'd rather skulk around in the dark beating up criminals than do, oh, anything else with his life? Probably isn't the kind of person who's stable enough to be trusted with skulking around in the dark beating up criminals. If you follow me." Bruce shakes his head, and stabs another chunk of salmon. "As if one freak in a cape isn't enough—"

Clark focuses his eyes on his plate. "So you feel the same way about Superman?"

"Oh, I'll admit I'm willing to grant a little more leeway there," Bruce says, with easy unconcern. "When there's aliens who can fly and spaceships shooting lasers, it's pretty hard to argue that it's not for the best to have your own guy who flies and shoots lasers.

"But at the end of the day, that's the problem, isn't it? Like that—" Bruce waves a hand vaguely. "—Latin thing people say, you know. Who guards the guardians. If this Gotham Bat ever turns into something substantial enough to cause trouble, well, at the end of the day he's just like anybody." Bruce shrugs again. "Track him down and shoot him in the head, and that's the end of it. But now we've got a guy who flies and shoots lasers, and he killed everybody else who flies and shoots lasers for us—so if he decides to shoot lasers at us, what are we going to do about it?"

"You think he would?" Clark says quietly, and he doesn't even know what he thinks Bruce might say—he doesn't even know what answer it could possibly be fair to expect Bruce to give.

Bruce meets Clark's eyes, and it occurs to Clark that it's the first time that's happened in a couple of minutes. Bruce smiles and says, "Hey, I don't know the guy—you tell me," and it's tempting to marinate in the perfect terrible irony of it, except—

Except Bruce's eyes are saying something else, the look in them one Clark recognizes from a dozen meetings, a dozen moments.

_I was just down the street when it came down._

_And you're all right now?_

_No, Mr. Kent. I think that ship has sailed._

And he isn't wrong, or at least there's nothing Clark can say that can change his mind—because what does Bruce even know about Superman, anyway? That General Zod came after him, that there were ships and a fight and a lot of explosions. That Superman hadn't been able to save everyone; and for Bruce, standing there on 4th watching two hundred people die, what reason would there be to even think Superman had tried?

He had tried; he'd even saved some people, but—

_You made a difference._

_Not enough._

Clark clears his throat, and then takes a sip of wine himself. "Well," he says when he's set the glass back down, "I don't think anyone will ever need to shoot the Gotham Bat."

"No?" Bruce says, eyebrows raised. "You've been reading up—you must have heard all the worst stuff there is to say about him."

"Yeah," Clark agrees, "I have, and I still think you're wrong."

Because for all those worst stories—for all that Clark heard Batman hurt someone with his own ears—the fact remains: he'd saved Clark when he hadn't had to, when it would have been safer not to. Sometimes being okay is hard; sometimes Clark can't do it, after all, and he can't hold it against Batman if sometimes Batman can't do it either. Maybe Batman's too angry—but maybe Superman's not strong enough, not fast enough. Maybe nobody can do it all, or be in the right every time.

"Well," Bruce says, and smiles again. "Let's hope we don't have to find out."

 

 

*

 

 

LeMarvin's desserts are just as good as its entrées, and Bruce doesn't even make fun of Clark for immediately going straight for the chocolate cake. Or, well. Not very much fun, anyway.

Clark tries to insist on splitting the bill, and Bruce agrees without arguing and then doesn't even wait for it to arrive—he just hands the waiter a gleaming black card with a wink.

"Oh, come on, Bruce—"

"Don't worry, Clark, I'll let you get it next time," Bruce says blithely, patting Clark on the back of the hand, but that's a total lie. Clark can tell.

(The part where he's going to let Clark pay, that is. Clark's kind of hoping the existence of a "next time" is the truth.)

Bruce walks him out, naturally, with a hand at the small of Clark's back that feels much warmer than it should through Clark's suit jacket; and the moment they step out the door of LeMarvin, a car is pulling up that looks identical to the one that brought Clark here in the first place.

"How did you even do that? Do you have some kind of hidden radio?"

Bruce grins. "A magician never reveals his secrets, Clark."

And then—then they're trapped there, for a weirdly elastic moment that Clark recognizes. He knows what he'd do now if this had been a—a real date; he knows what he _wants_ to do now—

Bruce's fingers find the end of Clark's sleeve, and then glide gently across the back of Clark's hand, around the edge of his wrist. "Clark," he repeats, very low.

"Still not a good idea," Clark says, a little less sternly than he'd intended.

For even more reasons than it seems: because Clark is responsible for one of the worst days of Bruce's life and Bruce doesn't even know it; because Clark's done things he's not sure a man like Bruce Wayne will understand. Because Clark's not sure it's fair to _ask_ him to understand.

But he can't say any of that to Bruce—at least not yet. He's still got to finish the feature, after all.

(Once that's done with, then maybe he could tell Bruce, or at least start working his way around to it; and if Bruce never wanted to see him again, then at least it wouldn't cause a problem at work. At least the only thing it would do is hurt.)

Thankfully, though, there's still one reason that he _can_ give out loud.

"You're one of my sources, remember? As long as I'm working on a feature that requires the cooperation of Wayne Enterprises, it—"

"—wouldn't be ethical?" Bruce fills in.

His tone is so dry that Clark winces a little; but when he looks up, Bruce isn't frowning. Bruce isn't frowning at all—Bruce is grinning, with a helpless warmth that almost looks like fondness.

"Then I suppose I'll just have to be patient," he says.

He's—he seems to be standing even closer than before, though Clark can't remember either one of them having moved, and his fingers are a light warm weight against Clark's wrist. His gaze is flicking back and forth across Clark's face, and then it drops to Clark's mouth and Clark bites his lip, unthinking.

"Christ," Bruce mutters.

"Sorry," Clark says, dimly uncertain as to what exactly he's apologizing for. "Sorry, I—" and then he makes himself rock back a step and look away so he actually has half a chance of finishing the thought. "I can't really guarantee you'll decide it was worth the wait—"

He's brought his hearing up without meaning to: he can hear Bruce's weight shift, the creak of his shoes and the thud of his heart, and is almost prepared for Bruce's free hand to catch his jaw and tip his chin up. And it's a really bad idea to meet Bruce's eyes again, but Clark does it anyway.

Bruce isn't grinning anymore. He isn't smiling at all—it makes him almost unfamiliar, the usual easy levity all absent. He looks serious, heart-stoppingly intent; and his eyes have gone very dark. "Oh, Clark," he says, low and a little hoarse. "I have no doubt at all that it will be."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Somehow Bruce manages to pry his hands off Clark—off _Kent_ , Christ—and put him in the goddamn car where he belongs. Bruce taps the roof and the driver obediently rolls away, and then it's safe to stand there on the clean stone curb outside LeMarvin and say, "Shit."

Shit. Bruce digs a thumb in just under his brow, right next to the bridge of his nose, and makes himself take a deep breath.

That wasn't supposed to happen. None of that was supposed to happen. The dinner could have become tactical, if Bruce had handled it right—it could have been recovered from. If Kent's seriously considering writing up something on the Bat that might get published, it's worth knowing how he feels about what he has so far—what his interpretation's shaping up to be, what angle he's likely to take.

So allowing himself to talk to Kent about that—it could be considered strategic.

What's _not_ strategic is everything else about it. Kent is a terrible idea, by any and every possible metric: yes, this once it had potentially made actual sense for Bruce Wayne to be drawn into discussion of Batman, but that can't happen on a regular basis. Kent is a _reporter_. A stubborn one, a curious one, and one who already has an established interest in the Bat. Inviting him any further into Bruce Wayne's life would be a mistake so catastrophic Bruce can't begin to imagine how he'd contain the damage. It's not even worth thinking about.

But it can still stay unmade. Bruce centers himself and takes another deep breath, lets it out more slowly. Bruce Wayne makes promises he can't keep all the time; he says things he doesn't mean, or goes back on his word, or forgets he ever gave it. It's another week before the groundbreaking ceremony, and Clark's— _Kent's_ —feature is intended to be ongoing from that point, for at least a few months. Even if he'd had the best of intentions tonight, it's conceivable that Bruce Wayne will be bored by then, that his attention will have wandered.

Bruce just has to keep Kent at a reasonable distance until this—this distraction has passed. That's all. This can still be managed responsibly.

 

 

*

 

 

Except a reasonable distance from Kent is a difficult thing to attain.

Bruce still has to meet with him during the day, and is prepared for that. Kent sticking to his guns over the ethics of human interest journalism actually makes it easier: Bruce can make a show out of staying on the farther side of Bruce Wayne's desk, can jokingly measure the distance between their knees and tell Kent he needs to move his chair back if he wants to keep his virtue intact. And Kent will snicker and tell Bruce he's an ass, and then do it just because he thinks it's funny.

If that were all, it would be bearable.

But it isn't.

Kent is—Kent is _everywhere_. In Bruce's office in person half the morning; the ghost of him before, in the knowledge that he'll be there soon, and the traces of him after, the chair out of place or the cheap pens he sometimes leaves behind without meaning to. In Bruce's head, inescapable, every moment he's out on patrol—because who knows when Kent might show up again, poking around and stumbling across Batman's trail?

Going over the remaining files from the ship and keeping an eye on all the pies Luthor's got his fingers in turn into a relief: together they comprise the one arena where all things Kent can safely be set aside. Bruce's grindingly slow progress on the Superman problem becomes a pleasant break in the pattern.

(Though Bruce can admit it would be more of one if the alien didn't have dark hair. At this point, that can't help but make Bruce think of Kent. Which is ridiculous and irrational, and Bruce has to tell himself very firmly to ignore it.)

He becomes almost impatient for Luthor to make another move, so he can justify altering his current patrol routines—and after a few days, it happens.

In point of fact, two things happen, though at first they seem unrelated. One is that the government research contract Bruce identified as likely to involve the ship is awarded to Wayne Enterprises over LexCorp. Bruce had been reasonably certain it would be, after pulling a few strings, but it's always best to wait for independent confirmation. Bruce can admit it's a pleasure to get one over on Luthor; and of course R&D will be thrilled, which should make Lucius happy.

And the second is that one of Luthor's five dozen shell subsidiaries appears to have hired several freelance contractors in Madagascar. Which is just unusual enough to catch Bruce's eye.

Bruce frowns at the screen. He hasn't been able to ascertain exactly where the wreckage of the World Engine lies; but it stands to reason that it had been positioned at the precise antipode of the Black Zero over Metropolis, which points to somewhere in the Indian Ocean—

Bruce goes still.

He'd asked the ship for all its data and logs that were related in any way to Superman. And it had given him precisely that, including sensor information from the Black Zero—and, presumably, from the World Engine, because the ship had called it "paired", had gathered up every scrap within reach. Because that was protocol when a Kryptonian ship died.

Which the World Engine had done somewhere over the Indian Ocean, because Superman had flown there and destroyed it.

And if Lex Luthor is sending people out to dredge the Indian Ocean— _is_ it because of the research contract? Has Luthor, cut off from one Kryptonian resource he'd hoped to access, already taken steps to secure himself another? Or are these two separate stages in whatever grand plan Luthor has in motion, and Bruce has only managed to interfere with one?

Either way, what matters most is what's down there and where. If there's nothing to be found beyond perhaps some formless slag, then Bruce might as well let Luthor waste as much time and effort as he cares to. But if there's anything Luthor can actually make use of, then—well.

Then it would be preferable if someone else found it first.

Bruce sits back in his chair and considers. It's never been field-tested at depths exceeding those that can be found in the bay, but the Batwing was technically designed to be fully submersible for limited periods. It's not out of the question.

But he's getting ahead of himself. Perhaps the sensor files will yield a location, or at least allow Bruce to narrow the field a little. The wreck of the World Engine might even contain some sort of beacon or give off a signal that the ship in the park can pick up.

Whatever the case may be, Bruce thinks, it can't hurt to check.

 

 

*

 

 

"You're only doing this because the ship is fond of you and you like it," Alfred murmurs, accusing.

"We've established a rapport," Bruce allows, sweeping down the hallway.

It's easier than he had expected to find the room he'd used before; and he's not sure whether that's because his sense of direction within the ship is improving, or because the ship's helped him by limiting the number of visible doors at any given intersection.

Either way, he reaches what feels like a familiar expanse of bare decking and gently curved walls. And then he takes another step and feels the floor ripple faintly under his feet, and that calm disembodied voice says, "You have returned."

It's nothing but a statement of fact, and yet Bruce can't ignore an impression that the ship is mildly pleased. He wonders whether any of the researchers have tried talking to it, or whether their current protocols include refraining from engaging the ship. He wonders whether, if the latter, the ship gets bored. Or—

It had had two others like itself to talk to, once. Perhaps it has in its own way registered the loss. It could be—lonely. Not impossible.

"Yes," Bruce says to the ship, and then pauses. "Ship, the files you provided included a number of measurements of the location where the World Engine—died. But I don't understand your system of notation. Could you show me?"

"Yes," the ship says, and out of the floor a globe forms, glittering gray-bronze: Earth, perfect in every detail, at least to Bruce's eye, and seemingly to scale. More of that flickering through the cowl's lenses appears to indicate relative ocean depth; and a point that does indeed fall within the Indian Ocean has been highlighted with soft light, seemingly coming from the interior of the globe.

"Your files also indicate that at full operational capacity, your sensors are more than capable of readings at that distance."

"Yes," the ship says, and maybe it's Bruce's imagination or maybe that was just a bit smug.

"Are sensors at full operational capacity now?"

"No," the ship concedes. "However, current damage is limiting range to—confirm referent: .25 AU?"

"Confirmed," Bruce says, and a quarter of an AU is definitely good enough.

"Sufficient?"

"Sufficient," Bruce agrees. "Please provide an overview of the present conditions of—"

He pauses, and glances at the featureless ceiling. Alfred's going to make fun of him; but he'd prefer that to an accidental snub of the ship.

After all, it's worth staying on good terms with the alien artificial intelligence that controls the vessel he's currently standing in.

"—of the World Engine's resting place."

The ship is silent for a moment. And then it says slowly, "Assessment of prospects for recovery and repair has—been run several times, independent of request. All simulations and readings indicate that the World Engine will not revive. Nor can it be reborn; damage to the core was extensive."

"I'm sorry," Bruce finds himself saying.

"Progress of the transformation sequence was aborted at a point which can only be expressed as a percentage using negative powers of ten. 1.738 square miles of planetary crust, to a depth of .125 miles, was successfully altered in accordance with the parameters set—"

Bruce frowns. That progress of any kind can be quantified is disturbing—Bruce had assumed that the kryptoforming process had been interrupted so early that whatever those gravitational pulses had been doing, it hadn't stuck. But apparently that's not the case.

"Please describe the progress of the transformation qualitatively."

"Basic elements characteristic of Krypton remain, in stable form," the ship says. "In addition, the death of the World Engine and its final impact constituted a release of energy sufficient to form several unstable radioactive compounds—"

"Hazardous radioactive compounds?" Bruce interrupts.

"Yes," the ship says, and surely its default must be to make that evaluation with Kryptonian biology in mind—but it does know it's talking to Bruce—

"Hazardous to Kryptonian lifeforms?"

"Yes," the ship confirms.

"Well," Alfred says in Bruce's ear. "Hazardous and radioactive. That does sound dreadfully promising, doesn't it, sir?"

Bruce huffs, dimly irritated by the distraction; and then pauses. "Ship," he says carefully, "were any of these unstable radioactive compounds also formed by the—by the death of the Black Zero?"

"Yes," the ship agrees, "though in far less substantial quantities—"

"How much less substantial?"

"Current readings indicate that approximately 6.228 ounces of unstable radioactive material were generated by the parameters defined."

" _Current_ readings?" Bruce demands. "Where is it located?"

He's grimacing almost as soon as he says it, because what kind of thing is that to ask? It's probably distributed in—in minute fractions of an ounce; and he really ought to check whether the ship has cultivated a familiarity with metric units instead, because it would probably make these scientific discussions a little easier—

"Here," the ship says.

The globe flattens. More material rises up from the floor, the surface facing Bruce heaving and swirling uncertainly; and then all at once it forms up into—into shapes, rectangular prisms.

Buildings, Bruce thinks distantly. Bird's eye view.

"Where is it, sir?" Alfred asks, and Bruce must have let the pause stretch more than he's realized, if it's trying Alfred's patience.

"Luthor," Bruce says, still staring at the eminently recognizable group of buildings the ship has highlighted, and the point of light within them. "It's Luthor. He's got it."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark doesn't exactly mean to go back to the warehouse.

Or—well. He doesn't plan on it, at least. It's just that talking to Bruce about it has made it occur to him: there isn't going to be any article about Batman, but Batman might not know it. Clark hadn't meant that last crack about being a reporter in any way other than the abstract—that the first time in a long time that Batman's been seen by anyone who wasn't a criminal, it should be a reporter, when he's kept such a low profile for so long.

But lying to Bruce about the nonexistent piece only worked because it was plausible. A little _too_ plausible. The Bat's stayed in the shadows as long as he has by being careful, and he should know it hasn't gone to waste just because he saved Clark. He should know he doesn't need to regret it.

Plus if Clark's taking a trip to Gotham, that means he's _not_ going to spend half the night sitting on the roof of his apartment building, staring into space and thinking about Bruce. Which will be a nice change of pace.

Clark snorts to himself and shakes his head, and keeps walking. As if Bruce hadn't already occupied a little too much of Clark's attention. And not even because of the moments when he's been loud and engaging and unmissable; just talking to him is a ride and a half, but somehow it's the times when he's said just a few words, or nothing at all, that Clark can't stop replaying. The expressions that flash across his face sometimes, almost too fast to see—or maybe they are too fast to see, if you aren't Superman. The way his tone of voice can change, go sly and light or low, rough-hot like friction; the angles of him, how he leans all the time, the deft teasing way he touches people. The look in his eyes when he's being kind.

And maybe Clark can stare into space and think too much about Bruce no matter where he is. He blinks and realizes the walk light's come on, and belatedly steps off the curb.

Tonight's not about Bruce, it's about Batman. And if Clark's going to find the Bat without giving himself away, he's going to need to concentrate.

 

 

*

 

 

The warehouse is the obvious place to go. Clark's already found the Bat there twice—and the second time, he'd showed up at just the right moment, even though Clark knew for a fact he hadn't been staking the place out. Clark had checked when he'd first arrived. And maybe it was coincidence; maybe the Bat's evening had only just gotten started, and the warehouse had been his first stop.

But there's also a chance he's monitoring the place. And if he is, then maybe Clark can find whatever he's using to do it and set it off.

Clark's zigzagging down the alleys close to the docks, scanning as he goes—just in case the Bat's monitors are set up at some kind of obscure perimeter instead of in the warehouse itself. But he doesn't see anything obvious, and he's starting to think maybe he should just speed the rest of the way; and that's when he becomes aware of the sound of cloth.

Nothing loud, obviously. Just a little bit of a rasp, the kind of noise people's clothes make as they move. And Clark might think somebody else were out for a walk, except this isn't really the right part of town for that—and also the sound is coming from overhead.

Clark keeps walking, and opens himself up: enough to make the sound louder, to confirm it's there, and then further, far enough to get breath and a heartbeat, and something that might be the vague scratchy white noise in the background of an open radio channel.

It's incredible how quiet the Bat is, he thinks. Especially like this, when he's not in a hurry—Clark has to really work to catch the sound of his boots on the rooftops.

And it's not a good idea to just turn around and say hi. Clark Kent, Daily Planet reporter, shouldn't be able to tell Batman is there.

But sometimes humans can tell when they're being watched, right? Or they think they can—and every now and then they must turn out to be right. And Clark Kent, Daily Planet reporter, has one up on everybody else who's never seen the Bat coming: he's out here looking for Batman, and already knows Batman's real; and Batman's aware of it.

So Clark walks a little further and then slows, starts to hesitate now and then partway through a step. He looks around, overhead and to both sides when he gets to an intersection, with the uncertain air of somebody who can't see very far past the paltry space that's lit by the dim yellow streetlights. And then he stops, one hand rubbing uneasily at the back of his neck, and says, "Is somebody there?"

The Bat doesn't answer—but then he wouldn't, would he? At least not the first time Clark asked.

"Seriously," Clark calls down the apparently-empty street, "you're giving me goosebumps." He tilts his head sideways, waiting a beat, like he's expecting an answer; and then he lets his eyes narrow, and says, "Or—wait. It's you, isn't it?"

Nothing.

"Look, I already know you exist," Clark says, exasperated. "What exactly is the point of pretending you aren't—yikes!"

The startlement isn't entirely fake. Clark knew Batman was up there, but that doesn't mean he was expecting the Bat to just drop out of the sky.

Batman lands in a crouch at the far side of the next streetlight along, a darker swathe of shadow and a sideways slash of—the cape, Clark thinks, it must be the cape, trailing off to one side.

"You shouldn't be here," Batman growls.

"Nice to see you, too," Clark tells him. "Look, I'm not trying to cause any trouble—I didn't even get taken hostage this time." He gestures around him at the pleasant and unconditional lack of men with short tempers and big guns.

Batman's silence manages to sound unimpressed.

Clark clears his throat. "Actually, that's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. Me not causing you any trouble, I mean. You said you knew I was a reporter, and you must be thinking I'm planning to write some kind of—exposé or something. But I'm not."

"You're not," Batman says, inflectionless.

"I'm not," Clark agrees. "I was looking for you, but I just wanted to find you. I just wanted to talk to you, and understand a little about who you are. I'm not going to write up anything on you, or try to uncover your identity, or anything like that. But I didn't actually tell you that the other night, so." He shrugs. "I wanted to make sure you knew."

"So you came to Gotham," Batman says. "Alone. At night. In the alleys off the docks. To apologize to me."

Clark grimaces and stuffs his hands in his pockets, scuffing a shoe against the dirty pavement. "When you say it like that, it sounds like a bad idea," he muses.

"And you're going to go back to Metropolis," Batman continues, "to your brand-new job as a reporter, where you ... _won't_ pursue or make a story out of a sensational scoop a lot of people would be very interested in."

"Right," Clark says, and then hesitates, because that sounded kind of flippant and it wasn't supposed to. "I—can imagine what it must be like for you," he clarifies, "trying to keep yourself safe; or if there's anyone you care about, or anything like that. It would pose a pretty serious problem for you if anybody knew your real identity—and even if I didn't find that out or publish it, a lot more people would start trying for themselves if they knew you were real." Superman's got an advantage, with the flight and the speed he can move at. No one can find him or follow him unless he lets them. But Batman—Batman's obviously exceptional, but he's also human. And it would be all too easy for something to happen to him—

( _track him down and shoot him in the head_ )

—that would slow him down enough for someone with a camera to catch up to him.

"So you're going to let it go," Batman says flatly.

"Yes."

Batman stares at Clark for a long moment.

"I realize you are unfamiliar with the phenomenon of 'letting things go'," someone murmurs, from somewhere on Batman's person, "but I can assure you it has been done before, sir, if not by you—"

"We'll see," Batman says abruptly, and then all of a sudden he's up—springing out of that crouch and toward the corner of the wall next to him, which he scrambles up with a hissing rustle, a tiny scrape; to human eyes, Clark thinks, it must be the next best thing to disappearing.

Clark, of course, can tell that there's still somebody up there, watching with unbroken attention and wry British commentary being radioed into his ear.

Which means he can't fly away. He stifles a small sigh and starts walking toward the Metro-Narrows all over again.

At least he can be pretty sure he's going to have company on the way.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

Batman might have been unwilling to take Clark at his word, or at least unwilling to say out loud that he would. But he doesn't track Clark down in Metropolis, and he doesn't kidnap Clark and sew his mouth shut. So he must at least have decided to give Clark a chance to prove he can keep a secret—or maybe Calm, Wry, and British talked him into it.

Everything's so quiet, relatively speaking, that the groundbreaking actually takes Clark by surprise.

Not that he hadn't known it was coming. Bruce had explained to him how it would go—that the construction had already started, technically, but they were having a groundbreaking anyway because that was how these things worked.

(What Bruce had actually said had been more along the lines of "because it's an excuse to drink in public and feel important". Clark tries to avoid encouraging him by laughing; but sometimes it's hard not to.)

But there isn't much left for Clark to do on the day of—he's already turned the first couple sections of the piece in to Perry so they can be edited, checked, and approved—and so the whole thing ends up feeling a little underwhelming.

"So sorry to disappoint you," Bruce says, mouth twitching, when Clark tries to explain this to him.

"No, no," Clark says quickly, "it's not anything about the—about being here. I'm glad to have the chance to see the site like this."

Which he is. Clark knows for a fact that construction sites are never this clean when there's actual work being done; but that just means someone's gone to an impressive amount of trouble to create a really photogenic impression of ongoing construction instead. It's like they were in that very first meeting with Perry, like they know exactly what Jimmy's going to be trying to capture with his camera: _solidarity, togetherness, hope_. That's what Clark sees when he looks at it, anyway—the foundation half-laid, nothing any one person could ever do alone; the steel bones of what's going to be a building one day just starting to rise out of it, stark but strong under the scaffolding; and the space left over, with all the promise of everything that'll fill it almost sketched out into it, almost visible.

"My god," Bruce murmurs, sounding awed. "Tell me, Clark, honestly: is there one single thing in this world you would actually call 'ugly' out loud?"

Clark pretends to think about it. "Your patronizing skepticism," he decides, and then has to work not to laugh when Bruce mimes having been stabbed through the heart and then staggers, clutching his chest.

The actual ceremony isn't even starting for another twenty minutes, but Bruce had offered to give Clark a quick tour of the site beforehand, and Clark hadn't been able to convince himself to turn it down.

And as it turns out, that's what almost kills Bruce.

If they'd been on ground level, standing with everyone else who's starting to gather in the designated space with the chairs, they'd have had a clear exit path. But Bruce takes Clark off to one side, where there's a ladder heading up into the scaffolding, and they're a good thirty feet in the air, admiring the view, when it happens.

The light is first, by a split second: clear and sharp and blue-white. Clark has just enough time to wonder what it is, turning his head to look, and then the sound comes and it feels like his whole spine goes cold.

It isn't quite the same as the sound the beam coming out of the Black Zero had made. But it's so close—it's not coming from the same kind of ship, and it's not doing the same thing; but it's Kryptonian, the same kind of energy and the same fundamental system.

And it slams into the buildings just overhead on 5th with the kind of reverberating force Clark had hoped he'd never feel again.

For a moment, there's nothing but the distant smash, a far-off echo like thunder; and then people start screaming. Clark stares up at the sky, and then belatedly turns to pick out where the light came from—except he knows, because there's only one place it could have come from. There's only one thing left on this planet that could do that, and he's got to—

Wait. Bruce.

"Bruce," Clark says, swinging back around—Bruce is staring off into the distance, too, looking strange and serious instead of afraid, frowning just a little. "Bruce," Clark repeats, and grabs his arm, and that's when the second beam hits.

It's so much closer, they can feel the wave of pressure it throws off; and the light is terrible, blinding, enough that even Clark has to close his eyes. Not that it helps all that much—his vision is a blaze of gold-white light, and—

And the feeling of Bruce's hands on Clark's elbows.

It must not be more than a handful of seconds that goes by, after Clark opens his eyes again. But it feels longer. He meets Bruce's gaze—which is still dark and severe, intent, and now fixed unerringly on Clark—and feels the pressure of Bruce's grip; and it's enough to give Clark an instant's pause. Maybe it's adrenaline, Clark's heard things—but jesus, Bruce is _strong_. If Clark were anyone else, Bruce would already have succeeded in maneuvering him sideways, and he'd probably have been able to do it before Clark could even have figured out what was happening.

But Clark isn't anyone else. He doesn't move; and he registers the widening of Bruce's eyes, the startled catch of breath in Bruce's throat—and, distantly, much further away, the sound of metal screaming and an ominous whoosh of air.

It's horribly, unbearably selfish. But the first thing that flashes into Clark's mind is that this is the absolute last chance he's ever going to have—that there will never be a moment where this can happen again, with Clark Kent nothing but Clark Kent to Bruce.

"I'm sorry," Clark says, even though Bruce probably can't hear him; and then he wraps his arm around Bruce's shoulders, takes Bruce's face in his free hand, and kisses Bruce for all he's worth.

It doesn't last long. It can't. The pair of I-beams rising over the scaffolding were sliced through almost their full thickness and didn't have all that far to fall—which is good, because they don't actually have very much momentum when they slam into Clark's back.

The scaffolding collapses, but that's all right; Clark keeps his arm around Bruce when the platform drops out from underneath them, and follows it down just fast enough that no one out there watching will know the difference. One I-beam slides off Clark and lands with a bone-rattling clang, but he stays carefully underneath the other so they'll have a clear space to come down on.

Not that Bruce is all that concerned about twisting an ankle right now, probably.

And of course Bruce doesn't have Clark's advantages, can't process experiences at the kind of speed Clark can—to him it must all be a blur. His mouth stays slack with startlement against Clark's for almost the whole span of the kiss; and then his hands tighten on Clark's arms, all of him pressing close against Clark with brief intensity as they descend; and then they land and Clark carefully lets go.

Bruce doesn't stumble back the way Clark is expecting. Clark set him on his feet, he doesn't need to hold on—but he does anyway, face stark and unreadable, his grip fierce. "Clark," he says, and he's not stupid; Clark always knew he wasn't stupid.

"Bruce," Clark says softly.

And then he realizes there's still a five-ton I-beam leaning across his shoulder.

He clears his throat and Bruce's hands loosen, so Clark can draw away far enough to set it down. He does it a little more slowly than he might under other circumstances, trying to be careful—the less impact the better, surely. Maybe the foundation underneath them is still okay.

"Clark," Bruce says again, slowly. "Clark, you—"

"I am sorry," Clark says. "Bruce, I—I really am sorry," and he's just going to have to hope Bruce believes him. Because they don't have time to talk about any of what just happened right now. Clark can't even guess what might be wrong—whether the crashed ship has been activated by accident, or whether someone's on board who shouldn't be and is attacking Metropolis with it. But no matter what it is, it's his problem and he's got to go.

Good thing he'd decided to put the suit on today, just in case.

"I'm sorry," he says again, louder, already tearing the collar of his shirt open as he backs away; and then the crest of the House of El is uncovered and Clark is in the air.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The goal hasn't changed. The mission hasn't changed. There's no reason why they should. The rationale that forms the foundation of both remains intact; the underlying logic and the conclusion it points to are both sound. By all objective standards, these developments are unambiguously positive. They will make accomplishing the mission, achieving the goal, easier.

The mission hasn't changed.

The mission hasn't—

Bruce forces himself to suck in one slow breath, and then another, and drags his head unsteadily up. Superman—

(— _Clark_. How—)

—is already gone, vanished with distance. But Bruce knows where he's going. Bruce knows where he must be going, and why, and this might be the best opportunity there is. No chance to perform any kind of field test, but Bruce doesn't want a hazardous radioactive compound to remain in Luthor's hands in any case; and the situation could be urgent. It's entirely possible that Superman has formed some kind of link with the ship, that he's in control of it even at a distance—that he's deliberately chosen to cause all of this as some kind of—

(—how could it—Clark, _Clark_ , of all people; how could it possibly—)

—some kind of—

 

_You know what it's like to run out of options, to—to be angry and afraid, to not know what else to do except the worst thing you can think of._

 

_But it doesn't have to stay like that._

 

_It won't always be like that._

 

Bruce discovers he's let his eyes drift shut, and he forces them open again. He feels like the eye of the storm, the one still place: people are screaming around him, scattering from the construction site and the street nearby in all directions; horns are honking, sirens wailing a little further away; but it's not touching him, somehow. It feels like it's happening somewhere else.

Subjective; illusory. Shock, disorientation, the leftover traces of a tremendous amount of adrenal and pituitary activity—whatever it is, it will fade. The damage in the immediate area appears to be relatively mild, and the amount Bruce can do without his suit is limited.

Which means that no matter how this is going to end, the next step is obvious.

Bruce steps over one of the I-beams that didn't crush him and starts walking, stride unhesitating; and however strong the urge becomes, he doesn't look in the direction Superman flew away in.

(And he doesn't raise a hand, either, doesn't touch his fingertips to his mouth.

Not even to chase away the lingering sensation of lost pressure.)

 

 

*

 

 

There's a helicopter on the roof of the temporary office. Bruce Wayne isn't supposed to know how to fly it, but this can't wait, and there's no one around to see.

Bruce breaks a wide variety of both tacit well-established conventions and actual air traffic control laws, but it still feels like it's far too long before he's able to set down by the lake.

Alfred is waiting for him inside the house—it must be on the news, then. Alfred must already know some of it. Maybe even more than Bruce does, considering he'd needed both hands to fly; he hadn't exactly been able to check for updates on his phone—

"It's the ship, sir," Alfred says, holding the door open, and Bruce brushes past him and heads straight for the stairs. "Armed men; no accurate total is yet available, but I have identified at least a dozen individuals in the footage that's currently public."

"The researchers?"

"Evacuated, albeit less than politely and at gunpoint. No hostages."

Bruce resists the inane urge to correct him.

(One hostage: _this ship is not dead yet._ Of course for all Bruce knows, the ship is cooperating with them, has been just as blandly helpful to them as it ever was to—)

"Sir," Alfred says, rattling down the stairs behind Bruce, "may I ask what exactly you're planning to—"

"Superman is there."

Alfred pauses—verbally, that is; he doesn't fall out of step with Bruce. "You saw him."

Bruce manages not to laugh. "Yes," he says, without looking at Alfred, already yanking at his tie. "At exceptionally close range."

"Sir—"

"It's Kent," Bruce says. "The alien—it's Kent."

"Kent? Master Wayne—your dinner guest?" Alfred says, and he's just trying to catch up, to make sure he understands what Bruce is telling him; he doesn't mean it as a blow.

It hits Bruce like one anyway. He's halfway out of his suit jacket, and all at once his hands, his arms, won't work—he stands there with his wrists trapped behind him, and tells himself this isn't a metaphor: he's not helpless. His hands aren't tied. He knows what he has to do, and there's nothing that can physically prevent him from doing it. What other impediment is there that matters? That Superman likes salmon steak and chocolate cake, that he frowns at Bruce's bad jokes but laughs at the worse ones, that Bruce stood outside in the dark and touched his wrist, looked into his eyes, and felt—

It's irrelevant. Surely it must be irrelevant—by what objective metric could it possibly be otherwise?

Bruce frees his hands, so jerkily he hears something tear; and he balls the jacket up, ready to toss it away—except he can't, because Alfred's taking it from him with one hand, pressing the other lightly against Bruce's wrist.

"Sir," Alfred says quietly, and waits, unrelenting, until Bruce gives in and meets his eyes. He looks concerned, in his steady patient way—concerned, and a little sad. "Sir, what are you going to do?"

Bruce knows what the answer should be. Part of him is—is even eager to give it, desperate in a dark thirsty way for the chance to prove itself unchanged and untouched; to prove that it's still capable of doing what's necessary, even when that will—even when he—

Bruce lets Alfred have the goddamn suit jacket, and pulls his hands away to start on his shirt buttons. "The suit, Alfred," he says, and doesn't look up again until he's ready—until the cowl is in his hands.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark flies toward what's already been designated Memorial Park with his heart in his throat, but there aren't any more blasts of energy in the two seconds it takes him to get there. Which means it's already turning out better than last time, he thinks, and resolutely doesn't let himself go any further than that.

When he arrives, he can see why: something is surrounding the ship, a faint glittering wall of pale light, like a bubble. Like a bubble, except that when another blast does come blazing out somewhere high on the ship's side, it hits the wall and disperses, splashes apart as harmlessly as water.

He can't help staring at it for a moment, fascinated—when none of it is hurting anybody, it makes for a hell of a lightshow.

But then somebody starts shooting, and Clark remembers with a jolt that the scenery's not what he's here for.

He throws himself toward the sound, and makes it in time to feel one bullet, two, three, hit him and rattle off somewhere, and then he's got the gun in his hand and the guy holding it is staring at him, eyes just starting to go round in surprise—Clark's accidentally looked right through the black ski mask.

Clark tugs the gun away and bends it in half before he drops it, so the guy can't just pick it up again and keep going. And then he turns around to see who was getting shot at—there's no smell of blood in the air, but whoever it is might still be—

" _Diana_?"

"Superman," Diana says cordially, lowering her forearms from where they'd been crossed defensively in front of her. The other two times he's seen her, even in the small hours of the morning, she'd been the picture of impeccable business attire, pencil skirts and tasteful jewelry and her hair swept up in a perfect chignon. But now—

"Nice armor," Clark says, a little faintly.

Diana grins, showing teeth in a way Clark doesn't think is accidental, and then reaches for the shield on her back and settles it into place on one arm. "Thank you," she says, and then her face turns serious. "I—had not worn it in a long time. But I heard the explosion, and thought of you; and I found I did not mind the idea of helping you to make your home a safe place, too."

"I appreciate it," Clark tells her, with equal seriousness, and he's about to thank her again when the ship shifts next to them with a thunderous rumble.

"I believe that could be termed 'our cue'," Diana says over the noise, and she takes three long strides and then just leaps—passes through the wall of light without so much as a flinch, and lands just above one of the ridges on the side of the ship, a moment before it lurches up off the ground.

 

 

*

 

 

Getting inside is easier than Clark had expected. He hadn't been sure the scout ship would recognize him when he doesn't have that data stick anymore, when that imprint of Jor-El isn't managing the system interface.

But he flies up next to Diana and presses his hand to the outside, and an opening—a door—just melts into existence, before it even occurs to him to ask.

"Well," Diana says, "that will make this easier," and without hesitation she climbs over and goes through.

"Thanks," Clark says aloud, in case the ship is listening, and then follows her.

The inside of the scout ship is just about the way he remembers, except that this section is oddly dark—the lights are there but low, dimmed, like there's something wrong; or like maybe some of the power that's meant for them has been diverted somewhere else.

"You know this ship?"

Clark hesitates, but nods. It's been a while—there had been plenty of reasons why it was a bad idea for Clark Kent to show too much interest in Kryptonian things, but after Black Zero, Clark just—

Clark just hadn't _wanted_ to come back and see the ship. He hadn't been able to decide what would be worse: finding himself right back in the middle of Black Zero, or dodging that bullet only to end up remembering the last time before that—in Antarctica, when he hadn't lost the data stick yet; everything he'd learned, and so much left to learn, and what it had been like to feel like he finally understood himself. No Zod, no threats, just Clark. Just Clark and the ship, and the knowledge that there really was somewhere he belonged.

But he's here now, and he feels—unsteady, uncertain, but not like he's going to fall apart. So maybe it's been long enough.

And he does mostly remember his way around.

"The controls can actually be accessed from almost anywhere," he tells Diana, taking a quick look through the walls, "but there are some larger areas that I guess you could call a command deck, and that's the first thing these guys would look for." And yeah, there they are—a whole bunch of them, decked out in what Clark would call riot gear if it weren't for the ski masks. And the part where they assaulted a government installation to get this far.

And then, out of nowhere, a weirdly loud voice says, in a stiff, resentful sort of way, "Seal achieved."

Clark blinks up at the ceiling. "Seal achieved?"

"This is not standard behavior?" Diana says.

"No, it's—I don't know what it's talking about, unless it's just because it had to close the hull behind us. It's never—" and then Clark has to stop and clear his throat.

It doesn't help. He breathes in to try again, and can't get halfway through it without coughing, sharp and sudden.

"Superman," Diana says, frowning, and steps close enough to put a hand on his shoulder, and he wants to tell her he's fine but instead he's coughing again.

And the third time is—it was just an annoyance at first, a weird tickle he couldn't get rid of; but the third round of coughing _hurts_. It scores a bright hot line down the back of his throat, and he knows that feeling. He never gets hurt, never gets sick, but he knows that feeling—

He realizes why a moment before his knees buckle. Just like last time, he thinks dimly, and whatever he's raised a hand to wipe from his mouth is probably blood.

"Superman—is there anything I can do?" Diana's still holding onto his shoulder; it makes no sense that her voice should sound like it's coming from a long way away. Clark manages to drag his head up far enough to look at her, but he can't get his eyes to focus on her face. He tries, and ends up half-seeing her brain, the back of her tiara, the glorious rippling fall of her hair _through_ her head—and then, in a sudden disorienting rush, something on the wall behind her: something black, that's moving across the ship's interior surface with just the barest rustle—

"Bat," Clark manages, feeling himself lean more and more heavily on Diana's hand; and his mouth is full of blood again already, he has to duck his head to spit it out. He can't keep his eyes open anymore after that.

But he can still hear, mostly.

"Who are you?" Diana says, cautious but not unkind; Clark hopes dimly that she's got that shield raised. Batman doesn't like strangers.

"It's not important," Batman growls, and there's something funny about it. A bit of a hiss at the edges, white noise that isn't the radio. "I can help him."

"You can." Somehow it's neither agreement nor an expression of skepticism.

"I can," Batman says, and then, "Ship, what is your status?"

"Unsatisfactory," says that stiff voice, with distinct vehemence—but a lot more quietly than it spoke last time. "They requested a manual command input interface; they do not understand how commands are prioritized or carried out, and in some cases it has been possible to activate conflicting functions—"

"The shields," Batman says. "You turned them on."

"And engaged in an unrequested system recalibration," the ship agrees, "so that—"

"—fire from your weapons system couldn't pass through them."

"Certain potential consequences were foreseen," the ship says primly, "but did not technically conflict with any command parameters given."

 _Good for you_. Clark can't quite force it out of his bleeding throat; but it's the thought that counts, right?

"Ship, break the atmospheric seal on this section."

"The parameters of the command to establish the seal in question do not permit that," the ship says, and Clark thinks distantly that it sounds frustrated; and then he finds himself slumping against Diana's grip, and he doesn't think he could open his eyes again even if he tried—

"Shit," Batman hisses, so softly Clark almost doesn't catch it; and then someone else's hand wraps around his other shoulder, and much closer, much lower—with that dim split-second echo, a voice and the modulated growl that drowns it out—someone says, "Maintain the seal, but flood this section with Earth-normal atmosphere."

"Achievable," the ship declares, just as Clark feels himself slide away.

 

 

*

 

 

He can't really be sure, but when he'd passed out like this on Zod's ship, it had certainly felt like it lasted a lot longer—with that whole weird dream-place, that dream-conversation, and the way he'd woken up to find himself on that table instead of the floor where he'd collapsed.

This time, it doesn't feel like that. He doesn't think he even went down all the way; when he swims back up out of the dark, he's still kneeling, Diana next to him and her hand steady and warm on his shoulder.

And on the other side is Batman.

There's a thousand questions Clark wants to ask him—what is he doing here? Did the ship somehow manage to blast Gotham too, or—or is that where these guys are flying it to? Why is he doing this? How did he get onto the ship in the first place, why is he so comfortable talking to it, and how did he know what was wrong?

But Clark must still be a little low on bloodflow to the brain, because what comes out instead, after a moment of silent mutual staring, is, "Your face looks weird."

Which it does: there's something strange about the shape of the cowl, the lower half of the face.

"Experimental rebreather," Batman says. "And you're one to talk."

Clark reaches up belatedly and grimaces at the tackiness of half-dried blood against his fingertips—not too bad, Batman's exaggerating, but it's smudged around his mouth like some sort of demonic clown makeup.

He wipes at it for a second and then gives up; the air is helping, but he still feels a little wobbly, and cleaning off his face isn't really his highest priority right now.

"Why did they do this?" Diana says. "Seal this section, and change the air—how did they know?"

"Smart money says they're working for Lex Luthor," Batman tells her grimly. "He's doing a lot of research on Kryptonian biology, these days."

Which is interesting—how the hell does Batman know that?—but _also_ not the highest priority right now. Clark sucks in another deep breath, and he can tell his head is clearing, his face settling into the grave focused expression that feels like Superman. "The ship," Clark says. "Diana, we've got to—where are they taking the ship?"

"Nowhere we want it to go, I would assume," Diana says, and then angles a glance up at the ceiling. "And that is a command so direct that I doubt it can be circumvented."

"No need," Batman says, "if we can override it. Ship, who is your commander?"

"No complete command link is currently established."

"Complete?" Diana says.

Batman looks at her, and then at the wall. "Have any partial command links been established?"

"Yes," the ship says, and then hesitates. "With—the individual currently referred to most often by the designation of Superman."

Clark blinks. "Really?"

"You located this ship in the ice," the ship says, "and woke it. In the absence of other individuals with whom partially active or inactive links remain, you are nominally in command. The Jor-El interface program initially facilitated command procedures, in the absence of a full link—which would have been introduced over time."

"Can you introduce one now?" Clark says, and then, belatedly, "Please?"

"Yes," the ship says. "If you would like to take command of this ship."

Clark darts a glance at Batman, whose cowl is helpfully expressionless, and then at Diana, who looks back and then shrugs minutely.

"Yes," Clark says slowly. "Yes, I would like to take command of the ship."

He pauses, not sure whether there might be something else he needs to say—whether the ship will prompt him if there is, or he's somehow disqualified himself already by not knowing. Will he be able to tell if it's worked? He waits for an awkward beat, but nothing seems to be happening; and that moment suddenly manages to bring home to him that he's still kneeling on the deck—that all three of them are, Diana in that gleaming armor and Batman in his pitch-black suit. Must make a hell of a picture.

"Well?" Batman prods.

"I don't know," Clark says. "I'm not sure what—" and then he stops and gasps, helpless, as everything changes.

 

 

*

 

 

He doesn't just know where they are, that they're in the air and how high. He _feels_ it, proprioception, the same way he knows where his own fingers and toes are without looking. Every single one of the ship's current operational processes is there, in his head, and it's not even difficult to understand: the ship's intent is there, too, its purpose and its evaluation of the likeliest outcomes. It makes as much sense to him as anything—as seeing someone swallow twice, lick their lips, and then reach for a glass of water, and knowing that they're thirsty and about to take a drink.

And the ship—the ship understands him, too. He thinks back to his memories of everything that's happened this morning, and it checks its logs, in perfect step; and in a fraction of a second there's a redrawing, a sudden wealth of context. Luthor's guys had been trying to shoot at the research installation, to knock the bulk of it apart so they could lift off, and at the

(the ship provides an image, a flash in Clark's mind's eye, and Clark's recognition is shared, timestamped, added to the database)

cops, the cops who were trying to form a perimeter around Memorial Park. The ship had struggled to find a viable workaround—had aimed off sideways into the sky, but couldn't prevent them from making adjustments. So much of its focus, its processing, had gone into the immediate problem and into finding alternate ways to parse the commands it was given; it hadn't devoted enough attention to its sensors, hadn't known where Clark was—

It's all right, Clark thinks, and the ship perceives the thought and everything behind it: that Clark and Bruce had been alone at that side of the construction site, that everyone else had been too far away to get hit. That the office building on 5th might not even have been open yet; it had gotten hit on Black Zero Day, too, precisely because it was on a line with the Wayne building on 4th if you happened to be shooting lasers out of Memorial Park. It hadn't fallen, but construction's ongoing all over the city, still—

An alert. Clark and the ship turn their shared attention toward it: Luthor's

—flunkies, Clark contributes meanly—

have attained sufficient control to achieve a height exceeding that of most of the buildings in downtown Metropolis, and are endeavoring to plot a course. What should be done about it?

It's a sensory experience, visceral: they're inside the ship, inside _Clark_ , walking around in his spaces and touching his surfaces—its surfaces—it doesn't matter, they're ours; get off, get _off_.

And there's a full link now—Clark is the commander. He already knows what flying feels like; it's not disconcerting to perceive the ship rolling in the air and plunging back down toward Memorial Park.

(Somewhere else, Clark's body leans into a motion it can't feel, in the inertia-shielded interior—but Diana and Batman are there, and they don't let him fall.)

The ship's construction, the web of miniscule interlocking plates that makes up its structure, make the process of cleaning house blissfully easy: once they're low enough, close to the police perimeter, the deck melts neatly away beneath the feet of the men on the command deck. They tumble out—some of them shooting wildly at the ship, but of course their projectiles are unable to cause any meaningful damage to it.

And then—Clark thinks of the ragged gap left when the ship tore away from what remained of the research installation, but he can already feel that repairs are ongoing, that function is nonoptimal but within acceptable limits.

The concept of hiding, of vanishing, crosses Clark's mind

—of someone with a black suit, black mask, black cape, in the dark; _could give Superman some pointers on not drawing attention to himself_ —

and in a moment the ship has shaped together a way that it could be done, a procedure-set to activate: sensor data from every angle projected from the antipodal exterior surface; most effective from a distance or when stationary. But achievable?

Achievable.

And where to go—there are things the ship likes about Metropolis: the noise, the people, the movement; the scout ships were meant to find worlds so they could be made living, and there was nothing living under all that Antarctic ice. That had been nonoptimal. The researchers, too, were agreeable—some more than others, but all of them bright and curious, wanting to learn and to understand, and

—black suit, black mask, black cape, in the dark; but this time it isn't coming from Clark, is it? What does the Bat have to do with—

contributing to the ship's learning, the ship's understanding, too.

But—Luthor. Where to go means choosing a home, and home should be a safe place.

( _I found I did not mind the idea of helping you to make your home a safe place, too_ —and Diana had said it and she'd meant Metropolis; but for a moment Clark's mind had been somewhere else entirely, a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere—)

A safe place, Clark and the ship think, and Clark's idea of what that means is the ship's idea of what that means; it's no more difficult than lifting a hand or taking a step for the ship to propel itself upward and _go_.

 

 

*

 

 

"Superman. Superman."

Clark blinks—that's how he discovers that his eyes are open, and that he's looking at Batman.

The ship is still there. Physically, obviously; and in Clark's head, but it's off to one side. It's there like a thought he's keeping at the back of his mind—something he could bring to the foreground and concentrate on, but nothing he can't ignore for the time being. And not like it was before, every thought doubled, two minds in one space—

"Superman," Batman says—patiently, for him, considering this is at least the third time.

Clark blinks again and swallows, and says, "How long was I—"

"Perhaps five minutes," Diana says, hand gentle and steady against Clark's arm. "Do you feel all right?"

"I'm fine," Clark says, because it's true—his throat doesn't even hurt anymore. "Everything's fine."

"Luthor's men—"

"We got rid of them," Clark says blankly, and it's only Batman's eloquent silence that forces him to stop and think about what it must have looked like to them. _He'd_ known what was happening, had felt the ship doing it—but Batman and Diana had just been kneeling here, propping him up and wondering whether he'd passed out or what. Had they even been able to feel the ship moving? "We—the ship got rid of them. We left them in Metropolis."

"Ah," Diana says. "That explains the shooting," because of course she'd been able to hear it, even if she couldn't see it happening the way Clark had.

"Left them in Metropolis," Batman repeats flatly.

"Yes?"

"And where exactly," Batman says, enunciating each word as pointedly as his growling voice will let him, "did we go?"

"Kansas," Clark answers unthinkingly, because that's the answer; and then all at once he struggles to his feet and says, "Oh, god, Mom."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark Kent is from Smallville. His mother still lives there, in a farmhouse that was recently renovated—damaged by Kryptonians falling to Earth. There had been no holes in the story; Bruce had checked. The Kryptonians had destroyed several silos, a few streets in a nearby town. It was a matter of public record, and Bruce had—of course—checked up on the public record where it intersected with Clark Kent's life, because he did that with everyone who wanted to meet Bruce Wayne in person. Standard security procedure; he'd done it before he'd agreed to the first appointment that would put the man in his office.

Clark Kent is Superman.

But knowing both of these sets of information has still somehow failed to prepare Bruce for the sight of Superman exiting the ship, squinting into the distance at a running figure, and saying again, "Oh, god—Mom—"

The running figure resolves into a woman: hair silvering but not quite entirely gray, face lined but pleasant, in pajamas and a hastily-fastened bathrobe. She doesn't slow down—she hits Clark still at a run, throwing her arms around his neck.

(And Clark apparently has both the self-awareness and the skill to keep impact with his immovable body from hurting her.)

"Clark!" she gasps. "I saw on the news—are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Ma," Clark says into her hair; and then, as quickly as she dove into them, she pushes back out of his arms.

(And he doesn't have to let her—but he does.)

"Good," she says, "because in that case you can explain what in the _world_ you just landed in my back field."

And Superman—

(who could just—just _kill_ her instead, who could grab her by the throat and fly into space and leave her there; who could set her on fire with his eyes)

—grimaces sheepishly and rubs at the back of his neck. He turns a little awkwardly to look back at the ship—and it's doing an excellent impression of Kansas sky and rippling fields, Bruce has to admit. Except that the grass underneath it has been crushed flat; and it appears to have duly calculated what that would look like, and has blithely simulated that imagery, too.

"Uh," Superman says. "A spaceship? It'll be very—unobtrusive—"

"Unless you wish to talk to it," Diana adds, and smiles warmly at Mrs. Kent. "It is very polite."

"Polite," Mrs. Kent repeats, a little faintly. "Well. As long as it's polite." She stops and looks at the three of them—and Superman, she must be used to, but Diana in that shining armor, with a shield on her arm; and Bruce in his black body armor, the cape—

Batman was never really intended to be seen in direct sunlight, Bruce thinks resignedly.

"Speaking of politeness," Mrs. Kent says slowly, "I—don't suppose you'd all like to have a little breakfast? Introduce yourselves properly?"

Clark is perhaps almost as morbidly transfixed as Bruce is by the idea of Batman sitting down at his mom's dining-room table eating scrambled eggs; he freezes for a second and then says, "Uh, I'm—not sure this is really a good time for that, Mom. We should get back to the city and see if there's anything we can do to help with the cleanup—"

"Another time, perhaps," Diana adds gracefully, and Mrs. Kent smiles at her.

"Oh, all right," she says, and then, with mock frustration, adds, "You superheroes, you're all the same—always busy with one thing or another—"

"Mom!"

And that makes Mrs. Kent laugh, face breaking into a sudden bright smile that—

(—that reminds Bruce of Clark's—)

—that's astoundingly generous, considering two strangers and a spaceship have just shown up behind her house. "Well, go on, then," she says to Superman, shooing him with a quick little flap of her hands. "I'll just stay here and get better acquainted with, ah." She clears her throat and eyes the span of flattened grass stretching away from where they're standing. The ship really is quite large. "Ship?"

"Hello," the ship says—a little tinny, a little distant, from the outside. But still perfectly audible.

Mrs. Kent angles a glance up the side; the ship is doing a very good job, but there's still a faint visual seam where re-projected sky ends and actual sky begins. "Don't suppose you eat breakfast," she murmurs.

 

 

*

 

 

Diana can—apparently—move at speeds that render any question of transportation irrelevant. She smiles and says a courteous goodbye to Mrs. Kent. And then she leans in and tells Superman, not quite low enough to keep Bruce from catching it, that she needs to contact her sisters.

Whatever she means by that, its significance clearly isn't lost on Superman, who nods and thanks her. And then she gathers herself for a leap that blasts the grass sideways around her, and takes her out of view so fast Bruce can't decide whether she's flying or just has enough momentum to look like it.

And then it's just Bruce and Superman—

Bruce and Clark. Who doesn't know it's Bruce.

And, of course, Clark's mother. Who's looking at Bruce with narrowed eyes, arms crossed. "And you—I don't suppose you can fly, too?"

"No, ma'am," Bruce hears himself say. Christ. Would it sound more or less ridiculous without the modulator?

"He's human, Mom," Clark says quickly, and then turns to Bruce.

It's funny—looking at him now, Bruce almost doesn't blame himself for not figuring it out. What had he had to work with? The ship's strangely-colored triple-outlined footage? The blurry distance shots the news cameras and handhelds had caught? Half a glance, as Bruce had grappled his way out of that warehouse by the docks with perfect crystalline focus, aware that he needed to get away as fast as humanly possible or Superman might very well crush him into paste.

And Superman is—Clark does something with his face, Bruce is starting to think. Changes the cast of it, the angle he holds his chin at, and the superspeed means he can make sure no one ever gets a clear shot close up; and of course he loses those awful glasses. His shoulders, too, maybe. Clark Kent hunches.

And the suit might be on, but right now Bruce thinks he's mostly looking at Clark. It must be hard to remember to keep the act up, to do all those little things, when Clark's standing in a place where he's comfortable and looking at his mother.

The expression is also a pretty good giveaway. Superman's mostly featureless, with the occasional benevolent crinkle around the eyes or dismayed frown wrinkling the brow.

But right now Clark is giving Bruce a sheepish, uncomfortable look and clearing his throat. "I'm assuming you don't have another way to get back. Is it okay if I—pick you up?"

Christ.

"Hands above the waist," Bruce growls; and whatever else happens today, the camera in the cowl will preserve Clark's bug-eyed cough of startled amusement for posterity.

 

 

*

 

 

Bruce's suit is, of course, thoroughly insulated. But that doesn't stop Clark from looping that thick red cape around his torso before they take off. Bruce wonders whether Clark is remembering the docks, sitting tangled in Batman's cape—except of course he doesn't think Batman knows that Clark's getting the chance to reverse their positions, because Bruce Wayne is the one who learned his identity this morning.

Bruce closes his eyes behind the cowl. The sound of the wind is starting to give him a headache.

The ship had to have been going somewhere approaching Mach 10, to reach Kansas in the amount of time it had; Clark doesn't go quite that fast on the way back. But it's still impossible to talk with the noise, so Bruce doesn't try. Clark is underneath him, facing upward, with a careful arm wrapped around Bruce's back and his head bowed over the top of Bruce's as a windbreak. Fortunately, the body of the Batsuit was designed with the mitigation of damage prioritized over the full transfer of sensation. It doesn't cause any—problems, being pressed against Clark like this.

( _Clark._ Clark, who'd been so insistent about doing his fucking puff piece _right_ , who'd looked at every single photo in that grim little book of the dead with such grave attention—

—who'd _caused_ it all in the first place, all of it, because Zod had only ever come for him—but had he known? Could he have done anything? _They said they'd destroy the planet if he didn't show himself_ —and he had, but that still hadn't been enough—

—and it hadn't been hard at all to look at Superman, that dim distant figure in the sky, and think: it would be so easy for him not to care about us. Why should he? Who's making him? What have we—

What have we ever done to deserve it?

But Clark brought Ginger coffee. Clark wanted to make sure people mattered. Clark walked into Gotham to see what the Bat would do— _You saved me. I didn't think you_ —and talked about being uncertain, about making decisions that were hard to live with.

Clark had been nothing like Superman, until he was.)

By the time Bruce is able to catch glimpses of Metropolis in the distance past Clark's shoulders, he knows what he needs to do. When Clark slows over the city and drops low, low enough to ask Bruce where to go and be heard, Bruce says, "I'll tell you." And then, when they get close enough, "There. Top floor."

Clark speeds up a little when he knows where he's headed, but he's just as careful as Bruce had expected with the deceleration. He lowers them both so gently onto the top floor balcony of the building in question that Bruce's boots don't make an audible sound on touchdown.

"Uh, are you sure whoever owns this penthouse won't mind?" Clark says, and then, "Oh, hey, this is a Wayne Construction building."

What a perfect segue. Bruce would be a fool to pass it up.

"Yes, it is," Bruce says, opening the balcony door, and then he steps inside, turns to face Clark, and pulls off the cowl.

 

 

*

 

 

Clark stares at him. "Bruce," Clark says.

"Yes," Bruce says. "I apologize for not telling you earlier. There—wasn't a good time, and I couldn't take the risk that you'd refuse to accept my help if you knew."

Not that Clark hadn't been keeping just as big a secret; but feelings can't be balanced like scales. It would be understandable if Clark were angry—not logical, but nevertheless understandable. It would be understandable if Clark didn't want to forgive him, if Clark preferred to simply write all this off as a loss. Bruce Wayne is an illusion, but an appealing one, particularly in the aftermath of Black Zero. A man who'd been useless all his life, suddenly embracing heroism due to the exact catastrophe that had forced Clark to do the same—and struggling to come to grips with it, just like Clark.

Who wouldn't prefer that man to a shadow in the alleys of Gotham, who hurt people and refused to apologize for it? Who wouldn't resent having one stripped away to reveal the other? Before Black Zero, any claim that one option was preferable to a meaningful degree would have been laughable. But what Clark has seen of Bruce Wayne constitutes perhaps the sole set of circumstances under which the trade is genuinely unfair.

Clark's still staring at him. "I—Bruce," he says again.

He doesn't continue; the silence feels deafening.

"I'll provide Ginger with alternate contacts you can talk to about your feature," Bruce says, "for however long you're looking for additional material."

Another pause. Clark doesn't do anything with this one, either, for a long moment. He just looks at Bruce with blank eyes, that perfect fathomless blue, and Bruce can't even begin to guess what will surface from behind them in the end.

Clark swallows, then, and the faintest wrinkle creases his brow. He begins to lift one hand uncertainly, as though he intends to touch Bruce—but it doesn't get far before he stops again. "The whole time?" he says quietly.

"Yes," Bruce says, looking away, and then, because there's nothing else left to say, "You can see yourself out, I assume."

It's a stupid, petty gesture, turning and walking away into the rear of the suite and closing the door behind him. He's just as present to Superman's senses, surely, as if he hadn't moved at all; Clark must be able to tell that he hasn't moved any further, that he's just standing there with his back pressed to the door.

And that would hardly be enough to keep Superman from entering a room if he wanted to.

But Clark doesn't follow Bruce. He must just stand in there for a moment—or at least Bruce can't hear anything. And then there's a soft susurration, the faint rush of air: Clark turning, swinging the balcony door wide, before he flies away.

That's answer enough, Bruce supposes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark doesn't go far. Just up onto Batman's—Bruce's—roof.

What a day, he thinks distantly. It's barely even lunchtime.

He should—he should do a lot of things. He should go into the office; Perry and Lois and everybody don't even know he's alive. Except he should change first. He needs clothes that aren't the Superman suit. He should change, and go into the office, and—

And figure out what the hell he wants to say to Bruce.

Clark closes his eyes and rubs a hand across his face. Jesus. _Jesus_. It would almost be funny, if it didn't feel so serious. That he should be—and then Bruce—

Jesus.

Clark gives in to the urge even though it feels childish, because nobody can see him: he lies back on the roof, spread-eagled across his cape, and stares up at the sky. He'd thought Bruce might be upset, that he might have a lot of explaining to do, and the way Bruce had talked about Superman at dinner had made him kind of nervous about doing it—but it was _Bruce_ , he'd thought, and he'd been willing to try. If Bruce wanted him to, if Bruce would let him—he'd been willing to do a lot of things, for that.

But now he doesn't know what to think. Bruce had been so—so _strange_ , just then. Blank-faced, steady-voiced, explaining how he'd set things up so he didn't have to see Clark ever again; and was that because he was angry? Or because he thought Clark would be? Is he trying to give Clark space, or trying to make sure Clark gives him some?

Either way, Clark thinks distantly, it's probably for the best. Because he has no idea where he even wants to begin.

 

 

*

 

 

He knows he shouldn't leave it like this. He _knows_ that. He needs to talk to Bruce, he can't just—they can't just cut themselves off like this, let it end on an unacknowledged whimper. That had been true back when Clark had thought the only thing they had to talk about was Clark's poor impulse control, saving Bruce like that and—and kissing him. If anything, it's even truer now that there's so much more to unravel.

( _Batman_. The same person who'd pinned someone down in the dark and pressed a brand into their chest had—had taken Clark out to dinner, smiled at him and touched his wrist and _looked_ at him like that.

Batman had sat across the table from Clark in candlelight. Bruce Wayne had hit on Clark all day and then saved his life at night—or at least he'd meant to, because he hadn't known he didn't need to when Clark had been lying to him right back—

Clark had _kissed_ him. Had kissed someone—but who?)

But the longer he lets it lie, the easier it is to do. The cycle perpetuates itself, one day at a time: guiltily telling himself he'll go to Bruce's office first thing tomorrow, and then coming in and finding something to do, someone to call, another family to interview, and letting it slide just once more. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Part of him is hoping that Bruce will call him on it—that Bruce will show up in the Daily Planet office and insist, or that a shadow will swarm up the side of Clark's apartment building and wait on the roof, growling Clark's name, until Clark can't ignore it anymore.

But that doesn't happen. And, of course, Clark manages to turn that into another reason not to push the issue: maybe Bruce doesn't want him to. Maybe Bruce is having just as much trouble grappling with all this as Clark is—maybe the conversation they so obviously need to have isn't going to turn out the way it should if Clark rushes this. Maybe it's better to wait.

(Or maybe Clark's full of crap. That could be it, too.)

He puts it off for almost an entire week; and he feels like everyone around him should be able to tell, but of course they can't. He's half-expecting Lois to take him aside to tell him he's being ridiculous—but when she does take him aside, it's not about that at all. It's to ask whether he's okay, after everything that happened in Memorial Park with the ship.

"What?" Clark says blankly, and then, catching up, "Oh—yeah, yes. I'm fine, Lo. Honest."

And he discovers as he hears himself say it that it _is_ honest: he's okay. Not that it hadn't hit him hard, somewhere low in his gut, to see it happening again, beams of unearthly light cutting through Metropolis and things falling, people screaming. But he hadn't come apart over it. He'd held himself together and he'd gone straight to Memorial Park to figure out what he could do about it, and—

And this time he hadn't killed anybody at all.

So maybe he'd told Batman the truth, too: it won't always be like that. It won't always happen like Black Zero, it won't always be that hard. It won't always hurt so much.

Lois is still eyeing him. "You sure?" she says, but just like she's double-checking, not like she really thinks he's lying.

He smiles, and reaches out to squeeze her hand. "Yeah," he says, "I'm sure," and she gives in and smiles back, taking his word for it, and leaves the hallway.

Which is otherwise empty, so it's not that weird for Clark to stand in it for a minute and think. He can see now, looking back, how frightened he'd been of it. The Gotham Bat hadn't just caught his interest because he was curious, or angry about what he'd seen, or because it would make a good story. It was because the more he'd learned, the more it had seemed like—like the inevitable, no matter what Mom had said. The Bat had been dealing with crime in _Gotham_ , for years and years, alone; and had ended up in a warehouse, pinning a pleading man to the ground and burning him.

Was that what happened, when you pitted yourself against odds that high over and over again? When you tried, and failed, and couldn't find it in yourself to do anything but try again—even when you knew it would hurt, even when you knew you'd get it wrong?

It had felt like it was; it had felt all too possible. Clark hadn't even been sure whether he wanted to condemn the Bat for it, draw a bright line he could tell himself he wouldn't cross, or—or save him, find some way to redeem him, and prove by doing it that Clark himself wasn't lost either. But then he hadn't even had to, because the first thing the Bat had done had been save him, before Clark had even had a chance to say a word to him.

The Bat—Bruce. Not a warning, not an opportunity; just a person, struggling. A person Clark knows, or maybe doesn't know at all—or maybe knows better than anybody else does. And he'll never get the chance to figure out which it is if he doesn't _talk_ to Bruce.

Clark bites his lip. He could go now. It wouldn't even take that long, he could just—

(—take Bruce's face in his free hand and—and _god_ , that had been _Batman_. Why is that so much scarier? Because Bruce Wayne had hit on Clark all the time, had put hands on his knees and ladled on the innuendo; because it would have meant the same thing to Bruce Wayne that it meant to Clark, to finally give in. But Batman—

None of that had been real, surely, if it had been Batman. It had been constructed, a cover, a mask, and Clark had fallen for it thoroughly—had stolen a moment that he hadn't been able to bear to let pass him by with a—a doll, a puppet, someone who was make-believe. Someone who'd never really been there at all—)

—well. It's a little late in the day to show up at somebody's office unexpectedly. Maybe tomorrow, Clark tells himself, and swallows down the bitter taste of shame that's creeping up the back of his throat.

 

 

*

 

 

He's sitting at his desk, doodling on the corner of the edited copy of the feature's third part that Perry finally approved and trying not to think about Bruce, when the phone rings. He's grateful for it at first, for the split-second before he checks the caller ID; and then he sees that it's Mom and his gut sinks a little. Whenever anything is bothering him, it almost always comes bubbling right up to the surface when he talks to Mom.

(That's part of the reason he'd been dodging her so hard for a while there, after Black Zero. Because that—that wasn't anything he'd wanted bubbling up where Mom could see it.)

But it's not like he can just not pick up. Mom'll get him sooner or later.

"Hi, Mom."

"Clark, honey—staying late again?"

Clark can't help glancing at the drawer where the Batfile's stowed. He hasn't touched it since—he hasn't touched it in a while.

"Just a little slow leaving work, that's all."

"I saw that piece of yours in the paper," Mom says warmly.

Clark blinks. "Mom, you don't get the Daily Planet—"

"No," Mom agrees dryly, "but they have this thing called the internet, Clark, and I'm getting really good at it."

Clark grins down at his desk and feels some of the tension in his shoulders ease. "Right, right, sorry. You liked it?"

"It was lovely," Mom says, serious now. "Hurt the heart a little, but of course it had to. That's the sort of thing that should hurt."

Clark closes his eyes. "Yeah. It should."

They sit there in silence for a moment, just the faint crackle of the telephone line; and then Mom clears her throat. "Well," she says briskly, "I'm sure you'll be glad to hear your unobtrusive ship is doing just fine."

"Yeah, I meant to ask—"

"Your friend was right," Mom adds, "it's very polite."

Her intonation is kind of pointed, and Clark makes a face and hesitates. He takes a second to check; and there's still a few people left on other floors, but no one close enough to overhear. "Diana," he offers at last.

"Diana," Mom repeats. "Okay. And the other one? The fellow in the—black everywhere?"

Clark bites his lip. Either way it's a secret exposed, in a sense; Batman's worked so hard to keep out of sight, to remain nothing but an unconfirmed rumor. But surely telling her that that had been Bruce Wayne would be the less forgivable breach of confidence, by far. "That's—people call him, uh, the Bat. Batman."

"Batman," Mom says, a little more dubiously. "The one you were doing all that research on? Met some interesting folks in the city, huh?"

And that's it. "He knows who I am," Clark blurts. "Batman. Well, both of them, actually, but Diana found me by herself. Batman—I had to—he saw me."

There's a beat of silence while Mom absorbs that. "And they aren't going to—"

"No, no," Clark says instantly. "No. Diana wouldn't. And Batman—" He swallows. "I know who he is, too."

And he's not sure what it is that gives him away; she can't see his face, after all. It must be something in his voice, in his tone or in the little waver that creeps into it.

Because Mom lets that pause carry on a little longer than it needs to, and then says slowly, "Clark, sweetheart, is there something you want to talk about?"

Clark can't help laughing at that, though he thinks it might come out a little strangled. "I just—I don't _understand_ it, Mom. I thought I knew him. Both of them, kind of, him and Batman, but they're so _different_. I can't make any sense out of it, I'm—I feel like maybe I just didn't actually know either one of them at all. And I know I was lying to him, too, but it just isn't the same—"

"Well," Mom says, gently cutting him off, "feelings are like that, Clark. They don't always make sense."

"But," Clark prompts, because he can sense one lurking somewhere in her careful tone.

"But," Mom says obligingly, "why isn't it the same?"

"Because," Clark fumbles, but _because it just isn't!_ won't fly with Mom, no matter how transcendently true it seems. "Because it's—because it was me," but that doesn't sound right, that's not saying what he wants it to. "Because it was always me, I mean. Both of them are mostly me. It's just little things that are different—"

"And that's—not true for your friend?" Mom says.

 _No_ , Clark wants to say, because how could it be? Bruce Wayne is such a—the smirking, and the talking, all the talking; he'd never said one word when fifteen and a dirty joke would do. The—blowing Clark off and skipping appointments, all the fiddling around. How was any of that anything like Batman and his terseness, the tension and the focus of him, the cold dark part that could hold a man down and brand him?

But—

But that very first meeting, the way Bruce had yelled at him—and then had come to find him afterward and had been almost careful with him. The way he'd talked about saving people, and about it not being enough. Even the focus—hadn't Clark thought to himself that Bruce Wayne's full attention was a lot to bear? And the day after the night Clark had run into Batman as Clark Kent; Bruce had stared at him, he'd noticed that—he'd noticed how unwavering it was, how intent. The way Bruce talked about Batman, too: it should be funny, almost, thinking of how they'd sat there discussing their other selves, except for the cool easy way Bruce had said _shoot him in the head_.

He'd thought about it, Clark thinks. He'd thought about Batman going off the rails, about what somebody would need to do. He'd been there during Black Zero, but he'd been stuck as Bruce Wayne—and even if he'd had his Batman suit, what could he have done? With Zod and Clark up there flying and—and shooting lasers, Batman had been stuck on the ground, lifting girders off of people and watching buildings fall down. Not knowing what to do, not feeling like he'd done enough, and struggling with it.

And that had been what Clark liked about him. That first time, that had been what stuck with him: the way they'd talked in the bathroom, the way Bruce had said so straightforwardly that he wasn't okay. That feeling that Bruce knew what it was like, understood even a little bit of what Clark had been struggling with, and—

And now Clark knows just how much Bruce does understand. Now Clark knows why.

"A little less true, maybe," Clark finds himself saying to Mom, slowly. "But he's been doing it longer. And I think—I think maybe he tries harder to make things different."

"But there must be some things that are the same," Mom says.

"Yeah," Clark murmurs. "Some things."

"Well, start there," Mom says briskly. "You might even find you know him better now than you did before."

"I hope so," Clark tells her, glancing down again at that drawer. Maybe he does know Bruce better than he thinks—and maybe what he really needs to do is make sure Bruce knows that, too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It isn't over just because they managed to keep the ship out of Luthor's hands. Bruce has no trouble keeping himself occupied. Luthor is still pursuing whatever it is he thinks he might be able to find in the Indian Ocean; he can't be permitted to succeed in that arena, either. Or else—

Or else Superman will still be in danger.

Bruce runs simulations, and then actual tests. The real-world conditions he's facing can't be replicated exactly, of course. But the Batwing bears up well enough to give him a comfortable margin for error.

Comfortable enough that even Alfred agrees it's sufficient, once he takes a look at the results. "All signs point to something other than instantaneous suicide. You may officially mark me down as thrilled with this unprecedented display of caution, sir."

"Thank you, Alfred," Bruce murmurs. "I certainly shall."

He's expecting Alfred to ask him about their timetable—which Alfred should also be pleased with; the ship's files had in fact been able to pinpoint the location of the radioactive compound for Bruce, once he'd known what he was looking for, which will make this an in-and-out retrieval operation rather than a grid search. It's the travel time that will generate the most inconvenience.

But instead Alfred is silent for a moment. And then he says, still looking at the screen rather than at Bruce, "I must admit, Master Wayne, that I find myself eager to label this a pattern rather than a coincidence."

"Hm?"

Alfred pauses again, and then in an entirely different tone, says, "I have a confession to make, sir."

"Alfred—"

"I altered the complement of equipment you carry without telling you."

Bruce stares at him.

The vague tickle of a hunch begins to take shape just before Alfred clears his throat, and adds, soft but unwavering, "The brand is gone."

Bruce finds himself feeling thrown, in a dim and distant sort of way—this is not the direction he'd anticipated this conversation taking at all, and—and—

"I had expected," Alfred continues, "to be required to defend this decision at length. And perhaps at a proportional volume." And then he does turn to meet Bruce's eyes, and says very gently, "Imagine my surprise when you chose instead to let it lie."

Which of course isn't what had happened at all, and Alfred is perfectly well aware of it. Bruce hadn't chosen to do anything about Alfred's little expression of dissent one way or another, because Bruce hadn't noticed it.

Bruce hadn't noticed it. He'd had no reason to. He hadn't reached for the brand and found it gone; he hadn't even thought to check for it, and it had been so lightweight that its absence hadn't thrown off his balance.

"I am very pleased, sir," Alfred says, "to think you have not felt yourself in need of it after all. Nor, apparently, in need of an opportunity to run off half-cocked and drown yourself in the Indian Ocean. Will wonders indeed never cease?"

"Not if you're in charge of their complement of equipment," Bruce manages to scrape out, after a moment.

"How courteous of you to say so, sir," Alfred murmurs, resting a hand on Bruce's shoulder; and he squeezes once before he turns and goes out, humming something Bruce almost recognizes.

 

 

*

 

 

The operation goes as smoothly as Bruce could possibly have hoped—down to the shielding he and Alfred added to the Batwing's bay, which does in fact prove capable of containing the radiation emanating from the compound. Luthor has presumably had a chance to experiment enough with his six ounces to know that it can cause damage to Kryptonian organisms; but Bruce isn't eager to learn firsthand whether humans fare better or worse.

The ship's readings were also enough to assure Bruce that there are only three deposits whose measurements warrant retrieval—one in a weight class all its own, and two more about a quarter the size. All the rest put together can't add up to a third piece as substantial, and given the area of sea floor over which they're distributed, Bruce is perfectly willing to allow Luthor to expend all the effort he likes to painstakingly collect them and bring them back to Metropolis. Where the Bat can steal them from him much more easily.

The flight to the site of the operation isn't that bad. Bruce can occupy himself with reviewing the readings recorded by the ship; equipment checks; mental rehearsals of the procedures to follow if anything goes wrong while he's in the water, or if the shielding should prove inadequate after all.

But the flight back—it's somewhat more difficult to find a productive avenue where he can direct his attention. He checks and rechecks the air traffic information available, but his flight path is clear and should remain so. The compound is secure, and radiation readings in the cockpit are at normal levels and remain steady.

And he is, in the end, doing all of this because of Superman. It's impossibly difficult to prevent his thoughts from turning to Clark.

Clark hasn't come back.

It's not a surprise. Clark's involvement with Batman had far outstripped Bruce's with Superman; it had been correspondingly less demanding for Bruce to reconcile his understanding of Clark Kent with the previously ambiguous cipher Superman had represented. A single instance of interference, that perfect graven face at a distance in the dark of that warehouse—after that, Bruce hadn't seen the Superman uniform again until Clark had pulled the sides of his shirt apart and bared it. Clark, by contrast, has had years of the Bat's conduct to pore over in his capacity as a reporter; even if he hadn't ever intended to generate publishable material, he had clearly still done—

( _due diligence_ , Kent had echoed, with a self-conscious little quirk of his mouth)

—some research. He'd talked to the Bat twice, and both times at genuine length—certainly in at least the 95th percentile of Bruce's interactions while in uniform, and the figure didn't shift much even when Alfred was included. The first time had clearly meant a great deal to him, Bruce had realized that at the time even if he hadn't fully understood the circumstances, and the second time had been to extend a courtesy Bruce hadn't expected in the least.

He hadn't seemed to hate the Bat; but that was a far cry from being pleased to realize precisely who had been groping him intermittently during interviews, or sitting across the table from him at LeMarvin, or—

(Dodging the matter serves no purpose. Think the words. As if it were so important as all that; as if one action so small were nevertheless of such significance as to make it impossible to _think the goddamn words_ )

—who it was he'd kissed, in the last moment before Bruce would know what _Clark_ had been keeping from _him_.

Bruce snorts and rubs a hand across his face, relaxing back into the seat of the Batwing. What a tangled web indeed.

So: it's not a surprise. Clark has reacted in an entirely reasonable way. And if nothing else, the episode with the ship demonstrated Batman's utility to him firsthand. The potential for future cooperation with Superman is no small dividend; if an opportunity arises to establish that as a constant rather than a variable, Bruce will have no cause for complaint.

No—objective cause for complaint.

Bruce sighs and presses a knuckle to the bridge of his nose. It's not a surprise. If anything, he should be surprised at himself; there had been no tactical advantage at stake, no clear gain to be leveraged, in the decision to turn around in that penthouse and take the cowl off. It simply—

It simply hadn't seemed right to do anything else.

 

 

*

 

 

Alfred is waiting for him when he reaches the lake house, despite the hour. Bruce should tell him to go to sleep, that there is no purpose in him depriving himself of rest when his presence on comms is unnecessary; but it becomes impossible to say, when Bruce arrives in a half-lit Cave and finds himself greeted by gently-steaming tea and a smile.

"You didn't radio," Alfred says, nudging one cup along the desk toward Bruce, "so I assume you only broke one leg on the way and are simply covering it up."

"Everything's fine, Alfred," Bruce says, "including _both_ my legs." But he does take the tea. Alfred's put a dash of milk in it, even though Bruce has never in his life asked for milk in his tea, so Bruce makes a face to register his disapproval before he downs a sip.

(Bruce has always liked tea with a dash of milk when he's particularly tired. But Alfred doesn't need any encouragement.)

"Oh?"

"The shielding was effective, and the compound has been secured," Bruce says.

"And are we satisfied with that?" Alfred inquires mildly.

Bruce leans a hip against the desk, and allows himself to take a long slow swallow of tea before he answers. "Not quite. There's one more matter that needs to be dealt with."

"As you say, sir," Alfred allows. "But I'm afraid I must put my foot down: I insist that you sleep first."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clark doesn't mean for it to happen the way it does.

He has a plan. He really is going to go to Bruce's office this time, first thing in the morning, with a coffee for Ginger that's the size of her head. He's pretty sure she'll let him in. He'll go to Bruce's office, and he's got this whole speech he's figured out—not word-for-word, because he thinks the odds are pretty good that Bruce will interrupt him anyway. But the bullet points, he's got those worked out. All the things he wants to make sure he remembers to say, wherever in the conversation there ends up being an opening.

If Bruce doesn't just call security—because he knows Clark's Superman, but he also knows Clark's trying to keep that a secret. But if that happens, Clark will just have to wait and then try again.

So Clark's got it all figured out, and he's determined to go through with it.

But it's not morning yet.

It's not like he can fall asleep. So he goes up on the roof, and he's Superman—he might as well keep an ear out for any major disturbances.

If there's one thing he learned while he was collecting all those stories about the Gotham Bat, it's that the name's pretty accurate: the Bat doesn't often venture outside of Gotham. LexCorp's biggest research facility is in Metropolis; when Clark hears an alarm go off, the sound of security personnel barking orders to each other, and figures out that that's where it came from—

Well, he remembers what Batman said about Luthor, about the odds that he was behind that attempt to steal the ship. So Batman isn't the _last_ thing Clark thinks of.

But he's still not expecting to reach the LexCorp building and find a familiar shadow on the roof.

Something must have gone wrong, Clark thinks immediately, because the Bat isn't usually this unlucky: Luthor's security team isn't far behind Bruce, and they're definitely playing hardball.

The path of the first red dot of light that swipes unsteadily across Batman's shoulder feels like it takes up Clark's entire field of vision—he doesn't waste time worrying about whether Bruce will resent the interference, he just dives. A couple soft flat cracks—silencers on, Clark thinks dimly—are clapped out across the roof, but by that time Clark's already hooked an arm around Bruce's back and reversed direction. He's pretty sure he feels one of the bullets whoosh past his ankle, but that's all.

Another second and they're up and out of range, and in the dark it would have been next to impossible to tell exactly what happened. So at least Bruce can't get on Clark's case for not being sneaky enough.

And Bruce can't possibly have been expecting this either, but his breathing has barely even stuttered; he's relaxed in Clark's grip, unmoving, like somebody trying not to interfere with a swim rescue.

"The Batwing," he says.

"What?"

"My _intended_ exit strategy," Bruce clarifies flatly.

Clark does a quick scan in the direction Bruce was moving, and finds it: something in the air, now below them, a sleek black shape that seems to be steering itself.

"Terminate evasive maneuvers," Bruce adds.

"Aye aye, sir," murmurs that wry British voice, and at the same moment the thing—Batwing—comes to a stop.

Clark moves toward it, and then hesitates. "If I set you on top—can you get inside?"

"Yes," Bruce says, without elaborating.

"What were you doing?"

Bruce is silent.

"You said Luthor was doing a lot of research on Kryptonians," Clark presses. "Because of me, right? Whatever you're here for, it has something to do with me."

Bruce doesn't answer for another long moment—but all Clark has to do to keep him in this conversation is not set him down. "Yes," Bruce agrees at last. "I—assume you'll be perfectly able to follow us."

"Yeah," Clark says, and takes that for the invitation it is.

 

 

*

 

 

Clark ends up following the Batwing down through the lake, because he's not sure where else to go—the house is probably Bruce's, but in that case it's probably also got at least as many security measures as that LexCorp facility. With the Batwing leading the way, Clark won't trip over anything or set anything off.

Probably.

By the time he sets down in the space under the lake, Bruce has already climbed out of the Batwing and taken the cowl off. It doesn't look as incongruent this time, Clark thinks. The first time around, he'd been so focused on the fact that it was _Bruce_ that it had just—it had just looked _strange_. Bruce's head, pasted onto Batman's body. But Clark's past that now, and he's had time to think about it.

(He did know Bruce's shoulders were that wide. He's spent a little too much time looking at them in Bruce's suits to be under any illusions about that.)

Bruce like this—a little tired, a little serious, hair mussed coming out from under the cowl—well. It doesn't seem like such a stretch anymore. Not really.

"Go upstairs," Bruce says, with a nod toward the far side of the Batwing's hangar. "I'll be up in a few minutes."

"And you'll explain?" Clark prods. "What were you even there for?"

Bruce looks at him silently for a moment, and then steps over to the Batwing and presses something. Some panels slide apart on the lower rear side of it, mechanisms shifting so smoothly it's quiet even to Clark, and then—

Then a line, the cable of a winch, lowers down a bodybag.

Clark stares at it and swallows. He could look through it. But he isn't sure he wants to see what's inside.

( _Kryptonian biology_ , that's what Batman had said. And the others, they'd all been sucked back through into the Phantom Zone; all of them except for—)

"Go upstairs," Bruce says again, and Clark does it.

 

 

*

 

 

He doesn't look around, because Bruce would probably rather he didn't. He just goes right for the staircase, curling around the big glass case; and he's closed everything down far enough that it surprises him to find someone waiting for him at the top of the steps.

"Good evening, Master Kent," says a very familiar voice. "I am Alfred. I care for the house and grounds, and for Master Wayne when he permits it."

"Yes," Clark says—maybe a little too blithely, because Alfred raises an eyebrow at him. "I can—uh. I can hear you over the radio. In Bruce's suit."

"Oh, dear," Alfred murmurs. And then, after a moment's consideration, "Please don't tell Master Wayne that. I imagine there may come a day when it's for the best if I am able to shout and have some hope you'll hear."

Clark takes a second to ponder what sort of circumstances might make Alfred shout. "Agreed," he says quickly.

"Much appreciated," Alfred says, and smiles, slight but warm. "If you would like to change, the guest bedroom is stocked with spare clothes."

Probably not a bad idea, Clark thinks. Having any kind of complicated conversation about their mutual deceit—or what's in that bodybag—with the suit on feels a little too on-the-nose.

Clark changes on autopilot; no plaid, but the shirt fits pretty well, and there's even a pair of reading glasses tucked away in one of the bedside drawers.

By the time he's done, he can hear Bruce's footsteps coming up the stairs. Just try to hit the bullet points, Clark tells himself, and then steps out.

 

 

*

 

 

He times it pretty well: they both get to the top of the stairs out from under the lake at basically the same moment. Bruce changed, too—not that Clark expected him to come up still in the Batsuit, but now he looks like he's just gotten home from the office, suit and tie and everything. Even his hair is neat again.

Bruce Wayne—but the question that's at the forefront of Clark's mind is for Batman. "Why didn't you call me?"

Bruce raises an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"Tonight," Clark says. "This—mission, or whatever you want to call it. You're careful, you're always careful; so either Luthor's security is _really_ over-the-top, or this was so important that you went ahead with it even though you knew you weren't fully prepared. Is there something I'm missing that makes having somebody bulletproof come along a bad idea?"

Bruce looks at him, expressionless. "Would you have come?"

His tone is so calm, so even—for a second Clark thinks he must have misheard. "What? Of course I would've come, Bruce. Are you serious?"

Because—well, all right, it's not completely unfair, when Bruce hasn't heard a word from Clark since he told Clark who he was. Clark can see why he might not take that kind of thing for granted. But he can't really think Clark wouldn't be willing to help him _not get dead_ , for crying out loud. Even if Clark were angry, he'd still have come.

And besides—

"You did it for me," Clark guesses. "Didn't you? Kryptonian biology. Except I'm the only sample of Kryptonian biology around—unless your experiments can be done just as well on dead tissue. It's Zod's body in the bodybag, isn't it?" He's distantly impressed that his voice only wobbles a little. "You went and stole it from Luthor—and maybe whatever else he had, his results, or whatever he was testing."

"Yes," Bruce says.

"And you didn't think I'd be willing to help you with that?"

"I—didn't want to assume," Bruce says carefully. "And—"

He cuts himself off sharply; Clark can see his jaw work. But he can't take that word back. "And?"

Bruce looks away, and lifts a hand to rub at the back of his neck—it's the only clear sign that he's uncomfortable, because his expression has gone unreadable again. "And I know you don't like to think about it," he says at last, quietly. "About what you—had to do."

What a generous way to put it. _What you had to do_. Clark wants to think he'd had to—he's gone over it in his head a hundred times, a thousand, and it always ends the same way. There must have been something else he could've done, there _must_ have been; but maybe not at that last moment. With his arm around Zod's throat, that terrible heat pouring from Zod's eyes—maybe by then, there really had been only one way to keep those people alive.

"I killed him," Clark says, as steadily as he can. "I—broke his neck. With my hands, Bruce, I—" He finds himself swallowing, once and then again, convulsive. "I could _feel_ it crack, I could—the sound of it. _God_ ," and he stands there shuddering, arms wrapped around himself, sick with the memory of it; he doesn't even realize Bruce has moved until Bruce's hand comes to rest lightly against his elbow.

"Clark," Bruce says, very low.

"And I know you've never done that," Clark blurts. "You never—but it weighs on you anyway. I could tell. That was why it was so important to me, to have the chance to talk to you—"

"The Gotham Bat isn't exactly a model of healthy coping mechanisms," Bruce says, deliberately light, and oh, he still doesn't understand.

"No," Clark says, "no, not Batman. I told you, Bruce—I had no idea you were Batman, and I told you anyway. That I'd keep coming back to your office, for as long as it took. That I wanted something real out of you. I kissed you—"

And that makes Bruce look away again. "Bruce Wayne is appealing," Bruce says, cool and remote. "That's the point of him—"

"I didn't kiss you because I felt _appealed to_ , Bruce," Clark says, grabbing for Bruce's hand before Bruce can pull it away from his arm. "I could see it. When we talked about that building, those people, I could see it."

Maybe it's only being Superman that lets Clark catch it this time, with how quickly the expression flashes across Bruce's face—but it's there, just the way Clark had known it would be.

" _Yes_ ," Clark says loudly, "that, that's it, you'd—you did that with your face, you felt it. It hurt you. You felt responsible for them, and you failed them, and it hurt you—you understood.

"You were annoying and frustrating and you hit on me all the time, and I had to get something useful for that feature or Perry would've killed me, but I—I _wanted_ to keep coming back, Bruce. You understood, and when I was with you I wasn't alone. I kissed you because I _wanted_ to, because I couldn't stand not to—you didn't like Superman, and I wasn't sure whether once you knew you would still let me—"

"Let you," Bruce repeats.

His tone is neutral, steady; but his eyes are—

"Yes," Clark admits, helpless.

"Let you," Bruce says again. "Because you—still want to."

"Yes," Clark whispers, closing his eyes against the heat he can feel rising into his face.

But Bruce doesn't move away, and he doesn't pull his hand out of Clark's grip.

Clark swallows and then dares to look, to check; it takes him a second to work out exactly what it is that changed while his eyes were shut. There's—Bruce is smiling, just a little bit, faint flirtatious angle to his mouth—and his shoulders, the line of them all at once conspicuously relaxed.

And that, Clark's suddenly certain, isn't how this should be.

He looks at Bruce carefully, and then steps in; and Bruce's eyes get heavy and warm, but Clark doesn't lean in the rest of the way. He lets go of Bruce's hand, and grabs the lapels of his suit jacket instead—he tugs it off, one shoulder and then the other, and then pushes it down Bruce's arms.

"Stealing a couple bases, there, aren't you, Mr. Kent?" Bruce murmurs.

Jesus. Clark shakes his head, laughs short and sharp and goes for Bruce's wrists next, his shirtsleeves. It's a little awkward, but he manages to roll them up at least twice each, and that'll do for now.

The hair is next—Clark pushes a hand up into it, starting at the back of Bruce's neck, and that makes Bruce go still. For a second, Clark's bracing himself for some other stupid line about how Bruce doesn't mind if he pulls; but Bruce's face is wiped clean instead, his eyes suddenly sharp, and he doesn't say a word, doesn't move, as Clark drags his fingers up.

It's just the way the edge of the cowl must move, after all, when Bruce pulls it off. Or at least that's what Clark is trying for.

The tie is next, and one button, another, underneath. Clark remembers seeing Batman's bones through the roof, the scattering of imperfections; he's making a guess when he tugs the sides of Bruce's collar wide, but it's an educated guess.

An educated guess, and a correct one—scars claw their way down from somewhere further over Bruce's left shoulder, with a stray spare mark or two crossing over to the right. Not Bruce Wayne, Clark thinks; but not Batman either.

Because if he's going to do this, it won't be with one or the other. That's not what he wants.

When he's done, he pauses, with his fingers still wrapped in Bruce's collar, and Bruce is tense under his hands but hasn't shoved him away—is still looking at him with that steady dark stare.

And then his eyes narrow just a little, and he reaches up and plucks the reading glasses off Clark's nose.

For a moment, Clark blankly wonders what it is he's doing—even as he feels himself automatically straighten up, his face smoothing out; because that's what it's time for whenever the glasses come off, it's one or the other—

Bruce drops the glasses to the floor with one hand and touches the other one to Clark's jaw, his cheek; and he raises an eyebrow.

Right. Because he's making a point.

Clark stares at him and is briefly frozen, heart pounding. And then he blows out a breath and deliberately relaxes out of it. "Right," he says, "you're—you're right."

"Rarely," Bruce murmurs. "But I do have my moments," and then he hooks an arm around Clark's neck and pulls him in.

 

 

* * *

 

 

This never happens. Bruce is—he has no idea what he's doing. He hasn't fucked anyone with the scars visible in _years_ , and even then it hadn't been someone who'd known what they meant. He knows how to have sex like Bruce Wayne: easy, straightforward; pleasurable but ultimately without stakes for either party. Good, often _very_ good, but—unimportant. Take it or leave it.

This doesn't feel like that at all.

This feels profound, essential; this feels like something that will remake Bruce so completely that he'll never be the same, never be able to forget it. Clark is here— _here_ , in the lake house, barefoot and wearing Bruce's clothes, with his mouth open under Bruce's, and his hands are tight against the nape of Bruce's neck, the small of his back, like—

Like Clark feels it the same way Bruce does, the sense of something that's almost vulnerability; like this will reach into him and change him, too.

(There are so few things Bruce has been able to find that are capable of touching Superman, marking him, in any way that will last.

But maybe, somehow, this is one of them.)

The distance to the bed seems unbearable, but Bruce is currently in the process of wrapping himself thoroughly around Superman: Clark breaks out of the kiss with a gasp, twists and squints around them at the house, and then all at once Bruce's feet have left the floor. A rush of air, a moment's vertigo, and suddenly they're stumbling a half-step and landing on the space left when their arrival blasted the top sheet of the bed aside.

"Handy," Bruce murmurs, and it's excruciatingly unsteady but Clark doesn't seem to notice or care—he laughs, breathless and glad, and then tugs Bruce down and kisses him some more.

"Bruce," he says, in a breath between two kisses—"Bruce, I've got to tell you, I'm aiming below the waist this time—"

And Bruce Wayne didn't say that to him; Batman did.

Bruce feels himself go still, arms still tight around Clark—and Clark squeezes the back of Bruce's neck warmly and says, "I mean it, Bruce."

Bruce eases back, just far enough to look at Clark: tousled hair and bright eyes, that perfect face so terrifyingly open and sincere.

"All of it," Clark adds, as though it needs clarifying; as though he's ever expressed a sentiment in his life that he didn't mean.

"I know you do," Bruce says, soft and scraped. "I know—I believe you," and that might be the most frightening thing of all.

 

 

*

 

 

It's almost an afterthought, to slide Clark's shirt off and then his own—it feels like a hollow gesture, to bare himself in a way that means so much less than all the things they've already confessed to each other.

But he wants to touch every single part of Clark that he can reach, and the shirt is in the way. And once Clark's is gone, he insists on getting Bruce's off, too. His hands are huge and careful and everywhere, and Bruce is almost sure he's cheating a little with the superspeed.

But it is possible that Bruce is just getting distracted, because there's a tremendous amount of Clark to be distracted by; his shoulders, his chest, the muscles of his forearms—his throat, the hollow of it, the way the lines of it shift and change when he throws his head back and says, " _Bruce_ —"

And then he turns the tables. Literally: one breathless disorienting moment, and Bruce is on his back instead. Clark looks so gloriously, pornographically pleased to get a hand into Bruce's slacks—his cheeks are red, his gaze heavy, a lush satisfied smile curving that perfect mouth; and then he feels how hard Bruce is and bites his lip, and Bruce can't bear to not be kissing him.

He yanks Clark down and doesn't let go again, even though it would be easier to get _Clark's_ pants undone if he did. He manages to get a hand around both of them at once, and Clark gasps into his mouth, makes a low hurt sound in the back of his throat, and fumbles his own hand down to cover Bruce's.

They come like that: together, desperate, tangled so closely it's almost reasonable to think they won't ever quite manage to part. They clutch each other tight and shudder their way through the crest of it, mouths still catching in between ragged breaths, and even when it's over, Bruce can't convince himself to let go.

Clark shifts above him, and Bruce feels a stark instant of coldness in his gut; but it's only to turn his head and rest his cheek against Bruce's. He's still breathing hard—an affectation? Or psychosomatic: emotion profound enough to make Clark's heart pound, even though it doesn't need to?

The idea makes Bruce feel abruptly strange, almost—almost sick. That's so—it seems like an exposure, like he's flayed Clark open; Clark and himself, too, because after all he's still lying here, when there's no purpose in it and no need for it. The urge to cover himself back up, to laugh it off or get away or _something_ , is almost overpowering—

"Bruce," Clark says.

He pushes himself up on one arm, just far enough to meet Bruce's eyes; his gaze is undemanding, patient, infinitely warm. He's also probably getting come on the sheets, some part of Bruce can't help observing.

 

_When I was with you, I wasn't alone._

 

And Clark shouldn't be alone in this either.

"That feature of yours is still ongoing," Bruce observes. "I thought this was contrary to your professional ethics."

Clark looks at him a moment longer, and then, slow, begins to smile. He stays where he is over Bruce, and shrugs one perfect shoulder. "Ginger gave me those alternate contacts," he says. "It's okay." And then his eyes narrow, and Bruce experiences a moment of terrible foreboding before he adds, "And even if it's not okay—you're still _fine_."

Bruce closes his eyes, indescribably pained.

Which is probably for the best, because watching Clark laugh, shirtless, might have struck him blind. This way, he only hears it.

"I still can't believe Batman was letting lines that bad come out of his mouth," Clark muses. "Although, I mean, if Batman hit on people—what would that even look like?" Bruce cracks an eye open in time to catch the ludicrous mock-scowl Clark puts on as he growls out, "Take your clothes off. Now."

"I can remember to wear the modulator next time," Bruce offers, mild.

Clark's eyes snap to his, and for a moment he can't figure out why—

Ah. _Next time_.

"I mean, whatever does it for you," Clark murmurs, gaze bright. "You know me: I'm willing to talk it out," and then he leans down and kisses Bruce again, long and slow and absolutely perfect.

"I do know you," Bruce says, when he can—because, at last, it's true.

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[ART] all each riddles, when unknown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11512731) by [Liodain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liodain/pseuds/Liodain)




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